On the up: London!
On the down: Scuzzy English yobs

I'll post up pix from England first since I've sorted them out. There were over 650 photos from the trip so it's going to take me ages. Have to do it in phases. But I miss my girls and boys in England so much I thought I'd blog about that first.

Here we are being normal - and we actually look quite decent, for a change. Elisa does seem to have the biggest smile in the world. Ever.

Ok pucker up and look gorgeous. We looked at the screen after we took it and decided it was just too awful....

Well, maybe it worked, because lots of strange boys came to talk to us and ask us daft questions. We kept ignoring them and Elisa shot them her very "what the fuck" look but they were all too off their faces to notice.

Next day it was off for shopping in my new favourite place in the world - Greenwich! There's this great little shop there called JOY and it really was just full of it!

I got out my camera like a sad little tourist and took photos of the shelves. Elisa looked horrified.

"Am I really embarrassing you by taking photos?"

"Err.... yes."

But look! How pretty!!!!!!

Pretty things and beautiful tat! See the pink Buddha heads, bottom left? I bought one home and everyone is appalled at how tacky it is. I see it as pink enlightenment.

Everything's all messy in just the right way. Bags and pillows and clothes and pretty nonsense things you don't really need.

Retro ice cream bowls and milkshake glasses. Ooooooh! How Betty Crocker.

Of course, racks and racks of beautiful clothes!...

... and more clothes! Any place with a polka dot dresses is ace on my cards.

They even had a divine book collection. No horrible pop fiction and crap Dan Brown novels. It was all 60s movie posters, Dita von Teese books about Burlesque, and gorgeously illustrated thangka books.

Then we discovered a shop called Daisy Cakes, that was just full of cake, pretty iced things and coloured chocolate buttons. Look!

Next day, I rounded up the troops and demanded everyone travel down to South London to see me for drinks. I was not prepared to go into Central London with all the tourists and bad traffic. Hence, Gipsy Moth in Greenwich.

This meant 1 1/2 hours on the train for Pete and Tom but never mind, they made it, the darlings!

I don't know why Pete looks so silly here - maybe because it was quite late when I took this, and he was thinking about the 1 1/2 hours he'd have to travel to get back.

Somehow, both of them seem to have grown epic proportions and were super tall this time round. I kept asking "Why are you so big now?" but they said they were always like that. Maybe it's because I've just been hanging around too many small boys back here in Asia.

Then I had to go make things worse by asking Tom, "Why do you look so pale?" (because he did), which only made him totally stroppy at me. He's working in some godforsaken place in Norwich - no wonder!

It took forever to get a decent photo because these British types kept trying to evade the camera. Sarah actually has her eyes open in this picture, which says a lot!

This photo of Angie and Elisa is so totally cute!! (I'm proud of how art-house it looks!)

Thouraya is cute as a button (but she hates photos so never wants to pose properly!). Actually, she's the only person in the world who doesn't realise that she's totally beautiful. I hang out with her hoping some of the beauty will rub off. After four years, it hadn't.

Anyway, these were the only proper pics Angie and Thouraya let me take of them - afterwards it was all "AGAIN?! *sigh*" which is why subsequent shots of them look like zombies (won't put them up, they'll get angry and that can be very scary).

Everyone looks like they're deep in some sort of intellectual discussion - then again, maybe they were just talking about how much they hate football.

This turned out too funny - Elisa err... making a face again. Me laughing at her making the face. And Sarah looking just plain bloody exasperated with our silly behaviour. (ewww my hair looks so fluffy here!)

Whew, was nice to know everyone is just the same as they always were. I wanted to cry when it was time to come home!

Okay, it's taken me almost a whole day to load these damn photos - blogger was being mean to me again. That's about all I can handle, arg. Next installment of travels for another day.