Guest blog entry #1 from Delle – THE FIRST DAY

A HUGE hello to all back home and to those who haven't met me yet, 'Hi, I'm Delle (obviously!) - I'm an Aussie girl from Brisbane, Queensland, and I am very very very VERY excited to be in England visiting Anna and Ben!!!!'

My adventure begins after many many many hours of flying - these I have attempted to block from my memory so we'll move right on to arriving at Heathrow at about 6am local time on Friday the 4th of July. I travelled over with Lachlan, the younger brother of Dotti (another Aussie girl living over here at the moment who has previously featured in this blog). Anna and Ben were quite easy to identify at the airport due to Anna's wild and enthusiastic arm-waving. :) Very handy!

After stuffing our assorted luggage into the car, we drove to a nearby station and caught the tube into London. Our next stop was the Russian Embassy where we were to meet up with Dotti and hopefully obtain a visa for Lachlan. Anna, Ben and I left them in the rather lengthy queue (see picture below) and headed off to explore a little of London. Our first stop was Notting Hill and the Portobello Road Markets (see photo below).





The first place we stopped at was a cute little hat stall and tiny shop – which turned out to be the site of my first significant and spectacularly clumsy moment. Now at this point I must defend myself in advance:

1. Take note that I had only maybe a few hours of sleep within the last 30 hour period.
2. That brief slumber was taken virtually upright on a plane and therefore not exactly what you would classify as the highest quality.
3. I have very poor spatial awareness at the best of times and so it wasn't particularly surprising when the following occurred...

Wandering leisurely into the back of the tiny shop, I browsed through the selection of hats – along the back wall were row upon row of them. What I failed to notice was that although the hats were in neat horizontal lines, the floor was not!!! As I ran my eye along the hats I literally stepped into thin air and tumbled down one flight of stairs, around a corner, and down a second flight of stairs, eventually stopping a few steps from the bottom and nearly ending up in the poor shop-owner's storeroom.

Ben was directly behind me and quickly ran down the stairs to check I was okay. Anna had been outside the shop but her attention was caught by the sound of a multitude of hats falling off the wall inside the shop. Upon realising that it was me as well as the hats that had fallen, she suddenly had visions of VERY terrible things having happened to me – and I had only been in the country about 3 hours!!! I did have to be helped to my feet as I was absolutely hysterical with laughter...this was just so typical! For Anna it was probably a relief to discover that I could still walk, talk and breathe, and emerged from the experience relatively unscathed – albeit with some minor bruises on my arms, legs and ribs and a couple of bumps on my head (don't worry Mum! - just assume this is a significant exaggeration of the true events :P).

That experience past, we wandered happily for an hour or so around the rest of the markets. Afterwards we headed via Baker Street to Regent's Park, where we had a lovely lunch and rejoined Dotti and Lachlan – back from their unfortunately unsuccessful trip to the Russian Embassy. We then wandered alongside the Thames and saw a few more of the sights of London.

After that, we caught the tube back to where the car was parked and headed north to Mansfield - where Dotti is currently living.

I have never felt so tired in my life and I have never been so glad to finally shower and flop into bed – completely and utterly exhausted!!!!