Marc has asked me to write this weeks blog entry for him as after our weeks holiday back in the UK. He's very busy at work (so he says) and seeing as I'm still a lady of leisure I have all the time in the world on my hands. So I figured I'd fill you all in our trip back to the homeland and then normal service will resume next week.
The whole flying process is so much easier these days. We were able to check in online allowing us to choose our seats by the window. We decided to fit in a last gym session to try and help us sleep on the flight . We then jumped in a taxi and said goodbye to our little Californian bungalow and headed to the airport for our flight at 6pm. Check-in was a breeze as we only had to drop our bags. We were soon settled in to our seats and in the air on our way back to Blighty. The people in front of us kindly reclined their seats all the way back as soon as we'd taken off which meant I couldn't feel my knees from this point on. It still gets me how incredibly selfish some people are, I do think you should at least wait until people have eaten before reclining your seats to sleep. After arguing with them to at least put their seat backs up whilst we ate our dinner we tucked in to our delicious airplane food.
After watching a film or two we decided we should try and get some sleep. Marc has the ability to sleep anywhere so he was already dozing away whilst I struggled to get comfy. It was at this point that I was suddenly hit by sheer panic that I had forgotten to pack my driving license. I should point out at this stage that as we had very limited time at home but had to travel a fair amount around the place we had booked a hire car so that we didn't have to waste valuable time on long and convoluted train journeys. I frantically emptied out the contents of my handbag but couldn't find it anywhere. This obviously woke Marc up. I then spent the rest of the whole journey worrying about what we were going to do. I thought I'd just thrown away all that money and I had messed up royally. Marc told me not to worry and it'd all be ok. This was very nice of him but I think he just wanted to get back to sleep. I wished I'd listened to him though as they let us hire the car anyway and I'd not slept a wink the whole flight.
Trying to remember how to drive a manual car was interesting and after giving Marc whiplash from our bunny hopping through the gears we made it back to our lovely flat in Crystal Palace.
I didn't realise just how much I'd missed the place until we walked through the front door. It was so great to be back home and my little sister had done such a lovely job looking after the place for us. I headed straight out and had a great night catching up with Challie and G in Brixton whilst Marc went to meet the boys for a Carter meeting to discuss the upcoming gigs. We managed to keep our jet lag at bay and had a great nights sleep back in our old bed. Waking up there, it felt like we'd never left.
Thursday was a jam packed day with Marc having yet more Carter meetings and suchlike during the day whilst I went and had a lovely lunch with Emma and Sinead. I then popped back to Battersea to visit all my old work friends. It was great to see them and it made me realise how much I was missing the place, especially my gorgeous office dogs. It was then back to the Palace for the evening where we caught up with a few friends. Unfortunately we really didn't get to see everyone that we wanted to as we only had two nights in London and I hope we didn't offend anyone that we didn't get to see.
Friday saw us head down to Southend to see Marc's mum and dad for the day. I had finally managed to get to grips with driving a manual again and enjoyed our little jaunt down south. It was lovely to see Marc's family again and catching up with them was brilliant. We even managed to pop over to see Mark and Becky and meet their new son Thomas for a little bit. Thomas is an absolutely gorgeous baby and we couldn't believe how much his big sister Mollie had grown in 6 months. Playing shop with Mollie I discovered that children's toys have come on somewhat as her shop till now came along with a chip and pin device. I was so impressed.
We were then up bright and early on Saturday morning to head up to St Albans for Natasha and Gary's wedding. This was the main reason we came back to the UK and I couldn't wait for the wedding. It didn't disappoint and we had an ace day. I love weddings and all they entail. Natasha looked beautiful and the church she got married in was really stunning. I think my favourite bit was the canapes and champagne after the ceremony. I think I could live on canapes alone, they are delicious. And I love meeting all the new people at your table and going through the obligatory 'how do you know the bride or groom?'. You always find out something you never knew about your friends. Having a boogie to cheesy wedding hits is always good fun and tucking in to wedding cake finished off the day a treat.
After enjoying a delicious room service breakfast we headed down to Kent to see my family to celebrate my mum's birthday. We had a delicious bbq in the garden and it was brilliant to see everyone and just hang out back home. This was lovely but there was lots of annoying wasps in the garden. I haven't seen any of them in LA! I miss seeing my sisters all the time so it was lovely to spend the day with them. I'm a real homebody and I miss seeing my family all the time. I'm very fortunate though in that I get to speak and see them via the brilliant ichat every week and they've all been or have plans to come visit us which makes things so much easier. I think without the powers of technology living over here would have been a lot harder. Once my sisters (and Gary!) had left we played the wii fit in the evening. Watching my Dad do a 'ski jump' was the highlight of our trip.
Neither of us could believe it when Monday came around and it was time to make our way back to LA. Once at the airport we decided to get some lunch at TGI Fridays. What a mistake. I have never had such appalling service. Our drinks were served in chipped half full glasses and the service was abysmal with no one willing to assist you in anyway shape or form. That definitely helped to make it easier to return to the land of good customer service. However insincere it might seem sometimes, at least you get people falling over to help you. Soon we were back on the plane after being selected for every random search possible. I think Marc looked dodgy myself.
We were then thrilled to discover we had people who reclined their seats again immediately as we took off. And what made it worse was the woman in front of me sat upright doing a crossword on her tray the whole way so she never even needed to recline her seat! We had a family behind us who had young kids on their laps so there was no way we could recline our seats as it would have squashed them flat. But oh well. I managed to fit in 5 films and the time just flew by and I couldn't believe it when we were landing and we were back in LA.
Despite feeling really homesick to be leaving the UK it felt nice to be back in our little shed again and with just 7 months left of our Californian adventure we are definitely going to make the most of our time here. I start my job next week, not sure how I'm going to adjust to working full time again. I'll miss my morning walks along the beach, hanging out at the farmers market and being full time hostess to our many visitors. I've really enjoyed it but can't wait to meet more people and start earning again.
Think i've rambled on long enough so will stop boring you all now and leave you to ponder on what Marc will thrill us all with in next weeks blog.
Emma x
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