Our 4 week visit to London started off quite well. Our main objectives apart from generally catching up with friends were to visit the London boat show and give some support to dear friends, one of whom had suffered a severe stroke 14 months previously.
The boat show was great, we managed to spend an entire day there and didn't even get to see any of the boats! We (well Dee) fell in love with a cooker made in the UK and which is clearly the Rolls Royce of marine cookers, with a price tag to match. But as cooking is a major activity on Sunflower we decided it would be worth it if it would fit. We still have the original stove which is now well over 25 years old and is a testament to Kiwi engineering and building. Although it still works, the grill is held together with high temp glue and the oven is a bit temperamental! Alan is making cardboards templates to see if we can squeeze the new one in!
After the boat show we caught up with friends in the country and spent a few nights down in Sussex enjoying country pubs, a pint of cider and caught up with the film 'the Kings Speech'.
We returned to London and then bad news struck. The friend we were staying with had driven to Nottingham in the north of England for a business meeting and been involved in a bad accident. Her car was a write off and she was in Nottingham hospital with broken ribs and a broken right arm.
We had borrowed a Chevy Matiz from a friend to use while we were in London. This is a little (very little) car, great for parking, but not for transporting a fragile person hours down a motorway. So we looked into hiring a larger more comfy vehicle in which to bring her home. We picked up the replacement car on Friday morning. We rushed up the motorway to see her, it was about 230 kilometers and took several hours to get there. She was in a bad way and very dopey with all the pain killers.We had initially thought she would just be in overnight, but they wanted to keep an eye on her, so we drove back to London late the same night.
The accident occurred on a Thursday, we had driven up and returned on the Friday. On Sunday we drove back to Nottingham expecting our friend to be released on Monday morning. We spent the night in Donnington, a few miles outside Nottingham and were ready to play chauffeur early the next day. But her arm had to be re-plastered, then she had to see the doctor, etc. Long story short, it was 7 pm before we could begin the journey back to London. We have now seen more of Nottingham Hospital than we needed to, and hope not to return for a long time!
At this point we decided we had better change our flights as we couldn't leave our friend in the state she was in, so we extended our stay for another 2 weeks. Our remaining time in London was mainly spent looking after things and visiting her husband who had had the stroke. He also gave us a scare as he was rushed to hospital with internal bleeding during this time. We are still waiting to hear the outcome of his test results. The day before we left a mutual friend who had been battling terminal cancer died quietly but not unexpectedly. It was a sombre ending to a difficult visit. We were just very glad that the accident happened while we were there to help out.
We debated whether we should stay on but decided we needed to get back to the boat as we hadn’t intended to be away for so long. Our friend was now far more independent and could manage on her own, so we decided to leave and return at a later date.
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