The Family Arrive

At the normally still well in bed hour of 7:45am, Helen and I set off for Port Elizabeth in the hire car we’d picked up the previous day. I had an appointment at the hospital for a scan at 9:45am and the family were due to arrive at the airport at 11:55am. Plenty of time to get things done but we didn’t want delays anywhere to be able to mess the day up.

As luck would have it we made it to Port Elizabeth ahead of time and the hospital appointment was bang on time as well. The first good news is that the scans on my shoulder confirmed (I believe) the impingement diagnosis and ruled out a damaged rotator cup. No operations required. Yay.

The next bit of good news, depending on who you are and how you look at it, was that we had plenty of time to hit the Ingress portals in town. What this really meant was a couple of sit downs in the car while I did my thing then a nice walkabout a park looking over the central area and a pleasant walk down and up some stairs to the old part of town.

Having exhausted our possibilities there we headed off to the airport and didn’t have to wait too long for the family to arrive. First in were John and Bao and a few minutes later they were followed by Amy and Ben. We were separated by glass while they waited for their luggage but we were soon all together. It was another deeply emotionally moment for me as it wasn’t so long ago I was convinced I’d never see them again.

Hugs were in order all round made all the better by Bao exemplary behaviour. Normally 1 year olds, airplanes, travel, and public places can be a disastrous combination. Not so for this one.

We stopped off at the Nanaga Farmer’s stall on the way back to Grahamstown to have a bite to eat and some refreshment. The next stop was my parents cottage in the retirement complex they’re in so they could meet everyone including Bao and Amy for the first time.

After a couple of hour or two with them we took the family down to my sister’s new home (my parents old home) for everyone to settle in. John and Bao soon returned to my parents with us due to lack of internet at Sue’s and need to call home.

Later in the evening we took my parents back to Sue’s to see their old home for the first time since they left it many months ago and to see all the things Sue and Jay have done to it to make it their own. They were both very pleasantly surprised.

The rest of the evening was spent in our own company with Jay proudly managing his pride and joy – his Braii (BBQ) – for which he achieved full marks (in my opinion).

Now, for once in quite a while, some pictures.

And, just to prove we are in Africa, on the camera I found some nice pics of when Jay took us on a public road which runs through a nearby game park. Enjoy them too.

Last but not least I feel I must mention the latest goodie haul. Ben is quite used to being the mule when visiting us and this time was no exception. In the haul this time was a new powerful laptop for me (I need it to get back to my project Euler problems), zillions of large face playing cards for my Mum’s bridge club and quite a few electronic gizmos I absolutely need to survive life. Included were two, two station wireless charging pads for our phones. Cool is not a cool enough word to describe them. Plonk the phones down and they charge. Brilliant. Of course, the room has gone anything but wireless. The area beside my bed is close to a death trap of spaghetti USB cables and power leads. It’ll get sorted out in time. I’m sure.