Sun, 23 Nov 2003

author Tim	location Emerson Valley, Milton Keynes, Bucks, England
posted 19:06 GMT	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/Milton Keynes ( all photos )

Last Full Day on This Side of the World ( No photos )
Perhaps our longest sleep-in this entire trip came today, finally dragging ourselves out of bed about 1pm. Meaghan seemed to be doing the worst of all from the excesses of the previous night, but a big fry-up breakfast soon put everything right.
Besides convincing them all to pose for a photo, not really much was done today. A few trips out here and there for supplies, Dave had to work, some TV got watched, and Liz and I caught up with journal.
Now we just have to finish packing our suitcases and hope and pray that they aren't overweight (or at least Singapore Airlines choose not to bother us about it if they are), and order in a pizza for the night.

It's funny that the whole trip is finally coming to an end - the emotions are a mix of sadness, disbelief and nervous excitement that we will return to the 'real world' for quite a while at least. Can't complain for a second - we've had a fantastic trip that we look forward to telling you all about (if you want to hear it, that is!). And of course there is plenty more of the world to see yet.
If there is as I seem to remember wireless net access in Singapore I'll put an update online from there, otherwise see you all in Sydney!

Flight Details: Tomorrow we leave here about 5:30am to get to Heathrow for the 11am SQ317 flight to Singapore, arriving 07:40 local time 25/11. After a two hour stop-over, we actually make it to Sydney on SQ219 at 8:15pm on Tuesday the 25th. Feel free to drop down to Kingsford Smith and say hello! We'd love to see as many faces as possible, of course!

author Tim	location Emerson Valley, Milton Keynes, Bucks, England
posted 18:54 GMT 23/11/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/Milton Keynes ( all photos )

Australia Falls to the Poms ( No photos )
We were all up early, Liz, Meaghan and I keen to show Dave (who is English) that the Aussies were going to clobber those pesky Poms in the Rugby World Cup Final. We donned jerseys, hoisted flags and headed into the big Weatherspoon's pub in central Milton Keynes in Meaghan's new car.
Shunning all reasoning, we got a few pints and sat down to watch the 9am kick off. Myself and the two girls were pretty much the only Aussie supporters there, against a crowd of the 'barmy army' in red and white. This didn't stop us from cheering loudly, but everyone was good sports about it.
As Jonny put that final kick over, we knew our vocals would come back to haunt us, but we just had friendly handshakes with the supporters, conceding that England had been the better team on the day, it was a fantastic game, and that the poms deserved to win. Oh well, we only have to be in the country for a couple more days to deal with the constant phone calls and text messages from English friends keen to rub it in!
The next thing after all that early-morning drinking and some post-match chatter was some food, and Meaghan and Dave led us to one of the pubs near the Snow Dome (one of the stranger things to find in a place such as Milton Keynes). We ate a great hearty meal before heading back to their place.
It wasn't too suprising that we ended up sleeping for most of the afternoon, which worked out well actually as we were heading back into town for a big bender for the night. A taxi drove us in, and after being sniffed by a sniffer dog and given the seal of approval, we were let into the noisy Lloyds bar. Plenty of Meaghan and Dave's friends were on hand to chat to, but overall the place was too packed and over-noisy to get much chatting done with heads more than one foot apart.
We set off about 1am to find a cab back to their place and crash for the evening.

author Tim	location Emerson Valley, Milton Keynes, Bucks, England
posted 18:34 GMT 23/11/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/Milton Keynes ( all photos )

Milton Keynes Again ( No photos )
(Continued from London 4)
We eventually found our way into Milton Keynes, through most of the 138 roundabouts, on the phone to Meaghan as she gave us directions to their incredibly hard to locate new house. The directions I had printed out from Multimap were basically useless, but eventually we were there.
Their place is a nice little open-plan two-story house, plenty big enough for the two of them and in a nice quiet street.
After dragging our bags inside, and of course a cup of tea, Peter went off with Dave in search of accommodation for the night. Dinner came in the form of a great pasta and salad, after which we spent the night chatting on various topics from travel and sport through to politics, and of course language differences between English and Australian.

(customised)