Life!

We had three holidays in July - for which there are separate posts: Visit to Leipzig with Bristol Choral Society Barnes Ringers Summer Trip Roving Ringers Lee and Emma came up to stay in the house and look after Suki - who missed us dreadfully! Found time to enjoy Wimbledon fortnight - made myself sit and watch it in the afternoons as it was something I had always wanted to do when I was at work and couldn't!  Ignored that feeling that I should be doing something more useful than watching TV in the afternoons.  The weather continued to be hot and sunny for most of the month, and the all time record high of 38.5 was reached on 25th. The nights were warm too and we had both fans going all night at times. Monica and I went to the Chiswick Choir Concert in St John's Smith Square.  Carmina Burana plus an award winning youth choir.  It was done without a full orchestra, just a lot of percussion and two pianos which still seemed very effective.  It was a very hot evening,

Barnes ringers at Eaton Bishop: L to R, Gill Tomlinson, Sarah Percival, Peter Richards, Mary Gow, Francis Ring-Davies, Caleb Saunders, Louise Booth, Mike Wigney, Andrew Howard-Smith, Penny Bradsell, Wendy Archibald, Tony Nunn, Rod Bickerton, Eddie Hartley, Malcolm McAlister Photos Itinerary Write Up QPs Wed 17th - picked Caleb up outside Acton station at 9.45 am and we were off.  We made reasonable time but found we were one of the last to arrive at the White Lion in Wilton for lunch.  Had a tuna sandwich which was huge - I kept half of it for another time (but threw it away the next day).  The pub was right by the river which made the garden a very pleasant place to sit and a nice start to the trip.   The final two towers of the day were in Hereford itself, so I dropped Mike off at the first one and went to check in at the hotel and have a wander round Hereford. We stayed at The Green Dragon , which was on the main street in Hereford right by the Cathedral.  Parking was

The conductor of the Chiswick Choir, Hilary Campbell, is also the conductor of the Bristol Choral Society who regularly go abroad.  This year they asked for extra singers from the Chiswick Choir to boost their numbers, although in the end they had sufficient and there were only 6 of us from Chiswick.  I didn't sing - just went along to see Leipzig. We got the tube to Heathrow - where in typical fashion I took the escalator while Mike took the lift, and I couldn't find him at the top because he had gone in to the Terminal and was behind the first row of check in desks while I was hanging around by the lift!  He eventually rang me and told me where to find him.  It took ages to check in - the guy didn't seem to know how to deal with the wheelchair - and at one point told us we would be taking it on to the plane!  While we were checking in Tim and Sarah appeared, checked in and went off to the departures lounge!  We joined them there later.  When we got to the gate we were w