It’s been a while since I have posted an article to this blog and that was not because I succumbed to the attentions of the black dog.  I did in fact make it to the Shanghai Botanical Gardens the very next day (more of that another time), but because I ran out of time before we headed back to the UK for a fortnight-long trip.  I had planned to keep the posts coming whilst we were in the UK, but that was just not possible, so I now have a huge back-log of things to write about.

Shanghai

We flew to the UK via China Eastern Airlines which isn’t the best airline in the world and we didn’t get this good view of Shanghai as we flew out – this picture comes from a friend of mine from my days at Merton, Oxford who is a television camerman and excellent photographer, who flew into and out of Shanghai on a filming trip whilst we were in Blighty.  Our own plane went south of the city and then turned eastwards, before heading in a more northerly direction towards Mongolia.  Our air hostess on China Eastern on the trip out was rude and aggressive and the food was poor, but at least onboard plane discipline has improved from the days when I first took a series of plane trips in China, when even sitting in your seats (never mind seat-belts) were an optional extra on take-off and landing on the trip between Guilin and Guangzhou in 1987 when I was the only westerner on board. (I really thought that someone would light up a Samovar mid-flight).

The Inn at Welland

We crammed a lot into our two weeks.  We managed to have fish and chips at Wargrave on the river bank overlooking the Thames, one of the many towns my mother was evacuated to during the war, at Ottolenghi’s Nopi restaurant in a road parallel to London’s Carnaby Street, lunch in the courtyard at the Wallace Collection just round the corner from where my mother lived in London, at my favourite London shop Libertys, at The Inn at Welland in Worcestershire where we just had to have locally grown asparagus – the

The Malverns from Welland

right place and the right season for it, and at the Grosvenor Arms at Alford just outside Chester, at Carluccios on St Pancras Station, at the Red Lion at Stodmarsh in Kent and at Chilli Cool a Szechuan restaurant in Bloomsbury, as well as at countless Starbucks, Costas etc……

We met up with Rozy who was in the final throes of her degree in Chinese at SOAS, and with Charlie and his girlfriend Ella who had come all the way up from Falmouth, my father-in-law and father, Richard’s brother Graham and wife Nicki, my brother and family, my friends Susie and Rosie, Richard’s god mother, his second cousin and wife and his friend Adrian, and our neighbours in Fordwich Philip, Elizabeth and Julie.

The V and A

Richard went to a Commercial Conference, met two customers and had two meetings with upper management, but failed to meet former colleagues for lunch on our penultimate day as a lock needed changing on our house in Kent.  He went to Nottinghamshire to see a man about a car and bought a bike box so that he could bring his racing bike back to Shanghai.  I went to Letchworth for a day’s Dutch Floral Design and visited the stunning Alexander McQueen exhibition Savage Beauty at the V&A on a whim and I am so glad that I did.  I popped into St.

St George’s Hanover Square

Libertys

George’s Hanover Square as I was passing and enjoyed being in a city where you can see a bright blue sky and also see the stars at night. I bought a pot of Marmite and a few other things besides to bring back to Shanghai with me and downloaded my VPN onto my iPad which is going to make reading electronic books so much easier.

Alliums on the Drive at Fordwich

In Fordwich Richard cut the lawn and I pulled out armfuls of forget-me-nots and sat by the pond with our two cats who followed me around our garden all afternoon. And we arranged for someone to come and cut the lawn, as it evidently wasn’t being done properly, and I rang the bank (yet again) and organised next year’s insurance for the house and whilst I saw Julie about the roof of her garden shed Richard talked to someone about doing the repointing on our house, and I had my hair done in Whitfield.  I got five blouses made up from silk I had bought back from China with me, as I could get it done more cheaply in the UK than I was being offered in Shanghai…..and somewhere in the middle of all this I had a day in bed because I was suffering from fatigue.

TaiChi Class on China Eastern

Richard trying out the Tai Chi

We left the UK on Friday evening again on China Eastern and this time our air hostess was much kinder and understood her role perfectly.   And there is one benefit of using this airline: an hour before you land you get a free Tai Chi lesson on the plane’s monitors….

We arrived at Pudong International Airport with our two large suitcases and two carry-on cases and a bicycle box and after clearing customs etc. we went in search of a taxi.  Most of the taxis arriving at the rank were the normal Shanghai VW Jettas, but after a few minutes a slightly taller taxi arrived.  This meant that we could get all the suitcases upright in the boot and the bike box in the foot well of the back seat.  Richard took the front passenger seat, whilst I sat sideways, legs outstretched along the back seat there being no space for my legs on the floor….

We are now back in Shanghai and normal service has resumed.  Richard will be away tonight – he is going to the factory in Beijing.