Old friends

A week of hellos and goodbyes.  On Friday we once more headed to Helen and George's for the night. They are probably sick of us by now, but are either too polite or too drunk to say. The purpose of this trip was to spend another 24 hours with Rob's dad before he flies back to NZ on Tuesday. It's fair to say the weather has not been kind to him. Even once he headed north to Scotland, the bad weather followed him, while we basked in the sun in the south. On his return, the rain joined him. After a smashing dinner, hearing tales of his trips in the north, on Saturday I made a trip of my own into London to meet an old friend. Nic Whalley is famous in our house for his repeated hospitality at some of Sydney's finest restaurants where he was the boss - Otto, Tetsuya, Lotus etc. One involved a new year's eve, where he was in charge of Cruise restaurant, one of a few in the Overseas Passenger Terminal. While its position offered stand out views of the opera house, it excluded any view of the harbour bridge, which really has the money shot when it comes to the midnight fireworks. At 11.45pm, Nic tapped me on the shoulder and led my sister, my Dad and Alexandra onto the roof. A waiter appeared with 4 Champagne flutes and on the stroke of midnight the 4 of us stood alone to watch the bridge explode with colour and light, while also eyeing the opera house, a view no one else in the building enjoyed. Anyway, over the years we met again and again at functions and events, we were lucky enough to be invited to, and Nic became a friend. The girls know him as the man who taught them how to point, roll their eyes and stare at crazy people, whilst chanting "knock, knock, curly whirly, err, errrghhh". Anyway here he is, across the table from me at the Tate Modern restaurant yesterday, where we shared a carafe of English wine, with his lovely partner Yoko (no, not the one who broke up The Beatles) and this is the lovely sea bream who gave its life for my lunch. Nic is a wonderful human being and makes me laugh almost as much as Rob , Paul Chinnery and Richard Hand do.

 On Sunday, we drove to Dad's for lunch with the delicious Aunty Joyce. Although not actually a blood relative, growing up she was as good as a real aunty to me, we called her children our cousins and our two families went on many adventures together. She hadn't changed a bit, despite claiming to be in her 70s, and we had a brilliant time catching up.