Stepped away for a moment

We spent the last couple of weeks trying our very best to get a visa, again! My beloved spent a lot of time holed up in the hotel room squinting over his computer, I spent a lot of time shopping and visiting Museums, we caught up with the children on the first weekend, wow who would have thought flying to Aberdeen from London could be almost as expensive as our flights from Algeria...Maybe we should deduct said expense from this years Christmas expense, yeah right, I can see how that would go down, like a lead balloon.

We caught two West End shows and managed to catch the second weekend with my family, flying through one birthday party, a catch up with an old school chum, the quickest 30 plus years I've experienced, two baby meet and greets, and a roast dinner. I caught up with another old friend who's health is not as it should be, and thoroughly enjoyed my trip around London, had we known we would have stayed so long maybe other things could have been planned, but such is the life of a nomad, you just never know how long you will be in one place, my oyster card got thrashed, at some stages it was smoking with the amount of tube trains I was jumping on and off, I went from one side of London to the other as far as my Oyster would let me, and as far as the end of zone 2 would go, the times I did extend my tour across all the zones was when visiting the family, everything was done by train or tube, or little brothers taxi service, well that was when he eventually remembered where he had left his car on the Friday evening, it was Sunday after all....

The shows well Book of Mormon was the first, and having booked the tickets I then had a melt down, 'what if I don't like it?', 'What if I can't take the swearing?', 'I don't like Southpark', well let me tell you from the moment the curtain went up I was enthralled, I laughed, I giggled, I gasped and cried, but only tears of happiness, from start to finish the show was a hoot, God love the Mormons and God love America! The second show we were lucky enough to see was an unexpected gift, Wicked it was and wicked it WAS, for a second evening in a wonderful London Theatre I grinned from ear to ear, I love a musical, I love the theatre, you gotta love a show, and where better than London Baby!

We now have our visa and having been given our passports we both were down trodden as we had only been given a 30 day visa, it wasn't until my beloved took the passports to work was he told 'no you have a 90 day visa, but you have to leave the country every 30 days to renew it', the visa process is a miraculous one, miraculous in that I am amazed by the process and how it actually works, or doesn't depending on your viewpoint, we now have only six pages left in our passports, and will be needing a new multiple entry visa, my beloved needs a work visa, then we both need a residence visa, and a Vietnam visa and a Cambodian visa, I think we will be needing new passports very soon, and lets hope we get all the visa's in one passport, THE NEW ONE !!

Peckish

So we are sitting at the airport in Algiers waiting on our plane to London, we have no idea how long we will be away, as we are applying for visa renewals from the Algerian Embassy and as is usual with any kind of visa from any country not just Algerian, we have no idea of a time scale.  We could be a day, we could be a week, we could even be 10 days or more, how do you pack for that type of trip, well let me tell you, the answer is LIGHT! And why? I here you ask, well I will tell you now, it is beginning to get a little nippy in Algiers and we both have fair weather clothing only, so the cases are more than half empty so we can fill them with warm clothing and wolly tights, those are for my beloved obviously….We will hit London late this afternoon with a bang, and shop till we drop, or at least until the shops throw us out. 

Somewhere in between times we will eat but today it is all about travel and clothes shopping. I have picked us out a lovely looking Japanese restaurant on Regents Street, so fingers crossed we are not so carried away with our shopping we forget to eat, although I have to say anyone that knows my beloved will know this will never, ever, and I do mean ever happen.  A creature of habit he is, but the weirdest thing is when working in the office he can go all day with no food, and recently often without breakfast too, but once he is out of the office his belly roars and he needs fed, today is a prime example of his belly getting the better of him, we had breakfast before leaving the apartment, we traveled to the airport, checked in and already he has eaten his first little snack, why? because as he said he was a ‘little peckish!’, I fully expect him to be ‘a little peckish’ again in around 10 minutes, and as anyone who has travelled will know, there is no such thing as a healthy option in an airport…..