End of our three month exchange - Now one day (almost it is 11.30pm Thursday29th Nov) before we depart for home – this three months house exchange has gone so incredibly quickly, driving to the movies last night (to see James Bond, very good) Laurie remarked he could not believe the experience we had been so looking forward to is now nearly over. Nothing but good things to say about it.
We settled in very well, feels like home. Neighbours speak to us, cat welcomes us home and we feel very comfortable.
No problems with the car and just a minor hicup with the central heating which a plumber put to rights by adding a new thermostat and a problem with the lighting which Laurie was able to fix.
I can see when we fully retire we will be doing more of these longer term exchanges. It does not feel like a holiday, it feels like a short term secondment and the opportunity of making the most of a different lifestyle.
We have enjoyed having the time to read books from the owners collection, watch local TV and listen to local radio. We have enjoyed the luxury of 'lying in', going to bed early with a good book, entertaining friends, strolling around the neighbourhood admiring the houses and gardens, browsing in the local shops, trying the local restaurants, going to the theatre and cinemas, exploring the countryside of England and further afield, Spain, all without the pressure of trying to cram everything into a short period of time or not feeling we are wasting time.
I think the success of this exchange has been because of the relationship we have built up with our exchangers over the one year planning stage and any queries we may have had were settled prior to the exchange taking place.
The more one exchanges the more one builds up a set of questions one needs to ask and the requirements which need to be fulfilled. Obviously over a long-term exchange some of these are more important than on a short term exchange and they will differ with the individuals concerned eg I like a good computer with good internet access, I learnt from a previous exchange where the computer was so old and had such limited on-line access that I had to go to the local internet cafe to send emails and go on-line to find out things about the area such as train services etc – don't assume that because you get emails the computer is up to scratch...previous exchanger had used a daughter's computer which was not available to us – this, in fact, did not spoil our exchange but for me would not be good on a longer exchange.
As we have just completed our packing, something we don't seem to learn yet say every time we must cut down on what we take on our holidays, we do bring too many clothes and end up fighting to get the suitcases closed for our return – stressful!
Our exchangers arrive back in Caversham early this afternoon, we hope to have an hour or so catching up with them before we take off to Windsor staying with our friends for our last night in the UK on this exchange.
We are now looking forward to our next confirmed exchange - to Vancouver - and looking for another one before that one takes place – where to we don't know until maybe something falls into our InBox or I do some searching to see what is out there... Who knows, the world is our oyster.

Is Chloe telling us something? Is she helping Laurie pack or does she want to go in our suitcase!

A beautiful late autumn day in Caversham, Laurie took the opportunity of a photo-walk this morning, although very cold a clear sunny day. The photos are of the main bridge from Caversham into Reading and also leading to motorway to Oxford and West. Caversham has 2.5 bridges over the Thames, the two main ones which become gridlocked in peak hour traffic and the .5 (one-way) our favourite which crosses the Thames in Sonning, although it too becomes gridlocked it is such a beautiful village it is no hardship just to sit in the car admiring the country side.

Dinner with friend Margaret Holton-Picard at a favourite restaurant - Latymers a Thai restaurant in Hammersmith, our favourite local restaurant whilst living in Barnes. Margaret was a colleague whilst I was working at Grant Thornton and was one of our first visitors to Auckland on our return, she also visited during our Spanish house exchange in Spain... We are really on the wind-down to our return to NZ next Friday. However tonight we have another overnight stay in Sussex with David and Marilyn and then pick up our friends from Florida who fly into Gatwick tomorrow for a short visit with us.

Laurie's little friend... Over the three months we have been here Chloe has wormed her way into our hearts. She is a Bengal Cat, a beautiful pedigree domestic cat which originated in America as a result of crossing Asian leopard cats with domestic cats. She has a very silky coat and is very vocal, she follows Laurie around like a little dog and he no sooner sits down and she is either on his knee or taking great interest in what he is doing. We do assure the Hoptons that she is not usually on the table and this was just too good a photo opportunity to miss.

Yorkshire – great as always to catch up with Laurie's sister Lyn and her husband Jack. We also always enjoy our meanderings through the Yorkshire countryside and this time was no different.

We struck rain whilst spending the day in York otherwise weather was good. We drove up via the 'slow country route' and returned via the M1, the latter not enjoyable sharing the road with every truck in England. However we did stop on the way home and have coffee with Kaye and Bernie in their delightful cotswold village. I don't think we will ever get bored exploring the English villages...

The photos – top left Kaye and myself, top right Yorkshire farm, next the Yorkshire moors, Cathy in York, and
Laurie and sister Lyn.

Christmas Lights a disappointment.
We spent Saturday (a brilliant sunny day) in London on a Christmas photo shoot and a stroll down Regent's Street to see the Christmas lights – oh dear, as far removed from Christmas as they could be... In fact London was a disapointment when it came to Christmas displays, Harrods windows are James Bond related, and all the other shops have gone for sophisticated window displays with models in evening gowns - not a santa or nativitiy scene to be seen, the only windows showing remotely christmassy were Disney and Hamleys and even they weren't a patch on previous years. I would not recommend it as a pleasant way to spend the day and for the first time we did not take one photo of a window, I wonder what New York has done this year – over dinner someone said it is because of the PC culture which is taking over England.

We had dinner in The Stockpot – and then we split for the evening in London's Westend, I went to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, a fabulous show and it was the last night so quite a poignant finish. Laurie went off to see Stomp, It's a combination of music, percussion and dance, performers flip over trash cans and other ordinary objects to generate a symphony of urban noises. A rhythmic collection of beats ...not my type of thing

Friday night we went to the Windsor Theatre to see The Letter Somerset Maugham – a very good production.

Another pub lunch with David and Marilyn Neary, this time in our neck of the woods, Henley.

Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus 11^th November around 4.30pm

Lord Mayors Show – This annual parade, 3 miles long, wound its way through the City of London – . The first Lord Mayor's Show was held in 1215 when King John's Charter stipulated that the new Lord Mayor must swear an oath of allegiance to the King, and also to literally show himself to the people. Since then only major events such as the Black Death and in 1852 the funeral of the Duke of Wellington have stopped the show. There was a huge variety of floats, acrobatics, and military displays and bands. In the twentieth century it was the first event ever to be broadcast live on television. It was estimated that half a million people watched it, with millions more watching on the BBC. A strange feeling knowing that aswe stood and watched the Lord Mayor's coach go by, someone stood in exactly that spot 450 years ago and marvelled at the sight of a camel on its way to meet Elizabeth I!
This was followed at 5.00pm (by which time it was dark) by a fireworks display on the Thames.

Madrid, We, along with friends Helen and Stuart from Windsor went off to Madrid for 4 days. Weather was appalling, rained continuously however did not spoil our enjoyment of the city, we went out walking each day with our wet weather gear and explored the streets of old Madrid. We adapted to the Spanish time table surprisingly well, breakfast 9.00, lunch 3.00, dinner 10.00pm retiring to bed sometime between 12.00 and 1.00 each night! Day 1 the boys did a museum and an art gallery whilst Helen and I did the shops, the rest of our stay was spent exploring and visiting the palace and other buildings of interest. We were all very taken with the award winning design of the new Madrid airport. Not very often one can say that one's experience in an airport is enjoyable but this one was, and even with the heavy security at no time were we harrassed and both arrival and departure went very smoothly.

My arthritic leg is a lot better but still painful to walk upstairs and downstairs, I am hoping that it may be due to the recent drop in temperature – at least I have a nice new fashionable walking stick! Will be interesting to see how it is when we go to Madrid on Thursday. We had dinner at friends Sylvia and Rob's place on Saturday, very English, they live in a thatched cottage in a picture book village in Oxfordshire, Sylvia had cooked pheasant which was lovely, the gravy so tasty as she had boiled all the bits and pieces of a pheasant they had had the week before so really tasty stock used. Pheasant came from a 'Boundry shoot' of the Blenheim estate this is a shoot for the estate staff and invited locals and starts on the boundary working inwards. On Wednesday we had dinner with NZ friends Kaye and Bernie, they live in a lovely part of Gloucestershire, (could not believe I had left my camera in Caversham) another glorious cottage attached to a 'big house' where they are sort of caretakers, the owners live in Chelsea London during the week (coincidently she is a NZer) and they come to the house for the weekend, we met the owners' two delightful spaniels who occasionally stay down in the country rather than returning to Chelsea. Kaye had cooked duck, so tender, cooked for three hours slowly and gravy was made with chopped up beetroot, delicious and the mashed potatoes and celeriac Laurie says was very good. We have been making use of our £20.00 pensioner's train passes (save 1/3 the cost of rail travel), and went into Somerset House yesterday to meet Lois who runs the House Exchange website we use, and I also had a look at the Tiffany exhibition – beautiful... The weather has turned a bit colder although Sunday was beautiful but at last there is a feeling of Autumn in the air – clocks went back on Saturday night and now dark by about 4.30pm.