I’m probably repeating myself, but, it’s funny how distances get so much smaller as you age, at least things which were unimaginably long distances become just a decent walk.

This walk for example, probably a couple of hours, maybe less, would have seemed so so far when I was growing up, and now it’s just a nice way to stretch the legs.  This chimney used to be used for smelting lead, we used to have “wide games” (things like capture the flag etc.) as kids in scouts.  Running around in the forest up by the chimney, ripping wool (lives) off people’s arms and trying to capture a flag.  So much fun, no idea if these kinds of things are even allowed any more.  Hopefully they are! (probably they are?)

Maaike very kindly offered to let me take full advantage of being remote and to stay on in Europe for a few weeks.  She headed back to NZ with Anna (and Anna got the most gigantic ice-cream from the local shop when we said we were heading back… she was utterly stoked).

Anna travels pretty well now (all screen time restrictions are lifted on planes..), but, it’s still a massive effort for Maaike to look after Anna for a few weeks on her own.  I have no idea how single parents do it.

I packed up a box of goodies to take back to Ireland… (NL does nibbly things very well, and of course cheeses).  We flew out of Schiphol airport at the same time.  We said our goodbyes and went to our separate checkin areas.  Very very fortunately they all led back to the same area ultimately, and, by complete chance we went through the scanners + departure at the same time.  Good thing we did too, because otherwise Maaike might not have been allowed to travel with Anna!  Schiphol has a policy for children and if it’s just one parent travelling on their own you have to fill this in (we didn’t know, so, hadn’t).  If I’d got an earlier flight and was non-contactable, well, I just don’t know what would have happened!

Anyway, all’s well as ends well, and we all travelled safely home and Michelle had a lovely welcoming sign for them!

We’ve been pretty careful since having Anna to keep pictures of her off the Internet, the flip side has been of course that most of the blog becomes private and I guess I’ve always enjoyed having a public blog.

So, I’m attempting a new thing (thanks ChatGPT ;) where I’ve tagged private content and it should just not appear to anonymous users.  If you want to see all the content going forward, please just contact me via email and I’ll give you the details to log in :)