West London - October thread

[Kewcumber]

My mum just arrived and let herself in. Apparenty DS rang her whilst I was in the shower and didn;t hang up so she couldn't call back to check I was OK. She arrived thinking I had fallen down the stairs and instructed DS to call (he's not actually smart enough yet to understand numbers!)

Better than the police I guess.

Good luck sfx Will be thinking of you

I had an adventure last night!!!

Friend came over for a mega-walk - and what with organsing stuff for back to school tday, kids finishing homework off etc, we didn't leave to go for our mega walk until about 3.30pm.

We went to Richmond park....

...it started to get dark in the park

..we realised we were lost!!

We spent about an hour walking very fast, fuelled by fear adenalin, marching through the woods in the dark. Eventually surfaced at Cambrian gate with a sigh of relief - feeling rather thrilled by our adventure

Hi everyone. Sorry no time to read and catch up.

COV if you are reading this please check our mail. I have sent a link about a potential hotel for the Christmas meet-up.

nothing like getting lost in the woods at night for cheap thrillshow halloweeny! guess ok if none of you are virgin blondes

unsurprisingly I had a fouls time at the consulate place absolute irrational and unreasonable rules was not able to do anything at all have to re apply for a lot of paperwork and start again, best case scenario all done in about 3months

please never go there on holidays do not support such a stupid country

sfx - I hd already ecided to boycott Potugal due to the Portugese Police's mysogonisic comments about Kate McCann

Sorry to hear you have to jump hrough so many stupid hurdles though

We saw lots of strange men in the wood last night but we think thy were cottaging, so no thret to us

DS2 is crawling and sitting up now and has started pulling himself up!!!

Hi all.

QC - It was nice bumping into you this morning. Gosh, Gherkin-kun has grown so much! He's probably as big as mine.

Oh dear. Sounds like you had a terrible time at the consulate, sfx. Well, if it's any consolation, the staff at Japanese consulate were famous for being rude and unfriendly, in the end, so many people complained about them and now we have the friendliest and most helpful staff. Power to the people!

You know, sfx, Japan and your country have a long history so it's very difficult for Japanese to turn against it.

Foxie, I bet Monty will be walking by xmas!

Sushi - I can;t imagine any Japanese organisation being rude and unhelpful?! . It was nice to see you, we should meet up and see if the boys will play nicely so we can have a coffee . At what age do they start "playing nicely" I'm looking forward to it.

Foxie - you know they are culling the deer after dark at the moment? The rustling could have been a park ranger with you in his sights!

Still have bleedin' sinusitis - DS is sleeping well ... I however...

Oh, speaking of the little gerkhin, he can have my "old" Kazakh money. I tried to hand over one thousand tenge, gave them my money from when I was there a year ago, and they said "that old money. you have new money?" I said "What? You have new money? And the old money is no good?" Pretty much, yeo that was the case. Good thing I don't have much of it. Anyway, I failed to find a flag in the dessert. So, he can have my old money as a souvenir.

go cub

foxie & sushi you should really make an effort to bad mouth and boycot them really

so now I have to

• request copy of birth cert. the one I had was the wrong kind.
• ask for appointment to renew id card and passport

but I may not use my married name because I need a valid id card for that so

• after 3 months wait, usual time it take to do i need to register marriage then renew all paperwork again and at least another 3 months

I am going for another nationality don't care which

hi all
foxie, how very selfish of you not to be culled by a deer stalker (!) and furnish the richmond and twickenham times with its lead story
god, i would have been terrified

kew, ooohh, oh about 12, i'm told...

sfx...deep breaths, nice glass of wine to get over your red tape debacle

dd sitting kissing my hand. ahhhhhhhhhhh..
what does she want?!
blimey o'reilly, school pick-up already..
toodlepip

don;t apply to be Kazakh the queues at teh Embassy are hideous. Cruise around London and pick the Embassy with the shortest queue.

Thanks Ele.

QC - there's a huge difference between private and public. Civil servants are known to be rude in Japan. Is it time we did another weekend meet-up? Have you got new tyre fitted now btw?

Hello all

Sfx - poor you having to suffer embassy trauma & bureaucracy, sounds like a right hassle

Kew - too bad about puncture

Foxie - well done DS. Glad you found your way out of the park. I once got lost jogging in a Swedish forest, similar circumstances but I was on my own , well scary. Funny how all the trees and paths start to look identical.

Need to surf net to find DH a b'day pressie now...

The nice man who does my mums car was going to come and do it and she said if it wasn;t back by the end of the day that she would pick up DS.

Weekend meet sounds good always happy to volunteer my house if necessary.

Oh, yes. Weekend meet sounds fun. When is it?

Oh lovely! Can I bring the toys to yours? Please?

hello all

back from the most amazingly grown up 2yr old birthday party!

will post pics on FB later. Food was fabbo and huge amounts of wine consumed. only 2 other kids there and they had a ball. all of them were really well behaved and dd was an utter star.

wandered around chatting to everyone, saying thank you for coming to my party and kissing everyone LOL!

in reality, the party started out life as a family reunion and double up as my mother's 70th to co-incide with my sister's visit. my extended family being a bunch of tossers meant only 1 cousin and 1 aunt came so we re-aligned, invited a bunch of close friends and cancelled the village hall in favour of parents' house.

and had a jolly good time, probably the better for the lack of family. felt sorry for my mum tho as it was all her side and at my nana's funeral last year they were all so keen to meet up at least once a year.

anyways, dd was an absolute star and charmed the pants off everyone. we even had a carved pumpkin which has come home with me today

dd still waking at 5am, when will she adjust to the clocks changing?

kew, bummer about the car. know what you mean on the money front.

i'm around all this weekend so would love to catch up with all and sundry!

foxie, are you WFH tomorrow?

extended family would be an interesting concept in my family, in fact even close family would be a bit tricky...

father - tosser and couldn't realistically be in the same room as my mum wihout being castrated

mothers sister - alcoholic who sponges off her and tells her how easy mum had it compared to poor ickle her

Her two daughters who I haven't seen in 20 years

Father's mother - 90 but (understandably) doesn't travel past Llanelli

Father's sister - lovely but verbose to the point of being coma inducing.
Father's sisters husband - reformed alcoholic (should get on well with motehrs sister)
Welsh cousins - very nice

Won't be inviting any of them to DS's birthday

Oh dear - glad I'm not the only one with an
nutty eccentric family!

Paddle am in office tomorrow, sadly

DS will be nearly months at Christmas so could well be walking!!! He's itching to go...

Its surprising how populated Richmond Park is at nightime actually. We asked directions from two Scandinavian joggers who had torches tied to their heads so presumably go there regularly in the dark

10 months that should have read

Kew - you are on - when shall we all converge on you and what do you want us to bring?

dh and dd outdid themselves today
they carved a jack o lantern and made pumpkin pie yum yum

foxie any news on tickets for fireworks? Is it on the 3rd?

Hi all. We have a lovely weekend with my sister and her brood. The office halloween party was spectacular as usual and the chilren had a blast. I have come down with ds's cold again and have felt rotten all day (I seem to be catching everything going recently, I think I need something to boost my immune system, not sure what though). Fortunately dh had already planned to have the day off and neither dd nor ds had school or nursery, so we had a pj day and dh is cooking this evening

CoV sorry to hear you are all ill . That's rotten

Do you still have DS2's coat? Have you any trips to Kew planned, or maybe I could pop over and collect it at the weekend? Is it the navy blue fleecy all in one thingy? If its not - it doesn't matter but if it is, then its worth me making the effort o get it as he can wear it now.

In fact I bought him a new Polartec allin one, age 6-12 months, 4 weeks ago and he is growing out of it already!

sfx - oh feck!!! I haven't had a letter TBH about the fireworks yet. Thanks for reminding me (brain is like the proverbial sieve)- I will ask DS1 and keep an eye out in the reading packets for a letter

good morning all

COV tha is awful I hope you are all better today

foxie - thanks

dd went down at 8pm yesterday, after a 30min nap at 4.30 and slept through to 7.30am am gobsmacked, and very pleased.

hope you are all well