Happy xmas and a fab new Year Year guys - hope this finds you all well.
Let’s begin where I left off last time, still on Fesdu Island and on my way back to the UK for a three week break. Well I am back in the Indian Ocean again- a little less tanned, a little more broke & rounder??? (Yes thanks dad) and my alcohol units have increased fifty fold. Was great to leave the island and return back to normality ( as well as that can be for the Ling Family aka `The Griswalds" ), great to be able to go out for coffee, buy a newspaper, catch public transport ( tube as opposed to bus) & mingle with civilization again!
Qatar Airways would not be my first choice of aircraft carriers.. unless you are a single white female looking for an Indian suitor to sweep you off your feet and take you back to Mumbai to share a house with fifty other relatives and twenty goats. Was pleased to have arrived in London where it was cold and raining and I was wearing flip-flops and a summer top.
Mother Griswald greeted me wearing flashing plastic spectacles - I was surprised that she had not been accosted by security. After a champagne fuelled reunion we drove back to Cardiff the next day with one of my mates in tow and here I settled back into life back home. It`s weird how easy it is to fall back into everything, even if you`ve not seen people for a year & a half it`s like you`ve never been apart. We had Christmas dinner early at our house on the Saturday and all the family came up, sat there looking at faces I hadn’t seen in a long while thinking that it was only yesterday that I said goodbye.
The kids have grown up and are no longer babies; Luke Skywalker is Sam Ling`s hero so trying to get him to have his hair cut is no easy mission. Maddie Ling is quite the princess and already has that air of exclusivity, I wasn’t allowed to play with her and she wanted me to leave her house on a few occasions....nice - but she will go far in life! All pink and pretty looking like a little doll but underneath made of nails and very good at headlocks directed at her big brother.
It took about a week to get over the jet-lag and the darkness of early -morning starts, here in the Maldives the sun is out & bright at 06.30 so my melatonin levels are generally well topped up! Visited my old man in the Hague for a few days, great city with fantastic architecture and caught up with a friend whom I travelled through the Australian outback with in Utrecht. Glad I had my drinking hat on in Holland as dad`s ex-pat mates were big drinkers and Friday night produced a spectacular hangover on Sat morning which when at Schipol airport near Christmas I could have done without!...unlike Dad who had a hair of the dog and minced through the KLM lounge with a glass of bubbly in one hand and a fistful of cheese in the other. I passed and fell asleep until I woke up in Heathrow. How does that work then? Half his age and twice the hangover!The remainder of my stay back home went really quickly and was spent doing the usual things like catching up with family & friends, bouncing off the walls to old skool tunes in sweaty clubs and rescuing old ladies who fall down Marks & Spencer’s escalators. This always happens next to me –whether it be puking, fainting or passing out. Nice. Oh and also sampling the exquisitive culinary delights of masterchef supreme Nicky Ling – goujons de jour are his signature dish…blimey bet Jamie Oliver’s crapping himself.
Oh and I did a really stupid thing - having just woken up from the all through the night flight to Male put my mp3 player in the back pocket of my jeans. Whilst waiting to clear customs I decided to go for a quick wee pulling my jeans down my mp3 player fell down the toilet!! gutted -but soo tired just stood there watching it. Its buggered.
BUT I love London, ohh I miss it and 2008 is the year I come back ! I hope to travel to India and Africa at some point and I guess that the Maldives being so near to India I may have to stop on the way back!
Have a great New Years Peeps and I hope all your wishes come true! See you in 2008