Visits with Jenny and Doug and various family members. Train from Wimbledon to Rayne's Park where Jenny picks us up and takes us to visit her Aunt Vera. Short visit but nice, with Vera reminiscing about her childhood with extended family in Haifa. Her father went to Palestine with Allenby and when he left the forces married a Christian Palestinian woman. Vera's sons and their families still live in the Middle East, though one son is about to retire to Scotland.
Next visit is to Jenny's daughter Emma, with us first stopping to pick up Jenny's mum on the way. Emma makes tea and the girls are busy, with Jasmine, now six demonstrating her really quite impressive reading skills and Leila, not quite four, showing her ability with computer games. Giles is busy too, a little less happily, landscaping the back garden, which involves quite a lot of excavation, but he joins us for tea.
Then back to Doug and Jenny's, where we're duly impressed that they invited us at all, as they're in the midst of a highly ambitious redecoration project, involving a great deal of paper stripping and painting of their very large house. We stay for drinks and a meal. Jenny's had a chicken in the oven and it's a good visit and catch up. Have now known them ten years, we calculate. The Nile cruise on which we met was in 2005. Laura also over briefly with stepdaughter Phoenix.
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