Regeneration

First of all, thanks for all your encouragement on the piano playing of yesterday.  It didn't go too badly thank goodness!  Service of Nine Lessons and Carols on 18 Dec to practise for now!  No time to practise with the choir...

Today we had a family outing to Longbridge just on the edge of Birmingham heading out towards Worcestershire and the Lickey Hills.  There is an enormous expanse of land which was used for many many years by Austin Rover, British Leyland, Rover, and was the workplace for Rob for many years from the age of 16.  The only bit of car factory there now is SAIC which occupies a tiny proportion of the original site.

All sorts of regeneration is going on.  The big building you can see looks like an ocean liner from the other side and is the new home for Bournville College.  The River Rea runs through the channel you can see wending its way across the shot.  There are new homes, new offices, new shops and restaurants.  We had to visit a certain large store as Dad has lost a lot of weight and wanted a new suit.  The staff were very helpful and Mom and my sister found places to sit, SHH supervised and I did the running around.

Lunch was a disaster - took ages and all the food at one of the hostelries was cold.  We had it redone and had it all free.

New stage in the parental support package today - I've had to do the washing and ironing for them.  Hope things calm down a bit soon.  We are all very wound up about what's going on in the family.

Hope you have all had a good day and are looking forward to the weekend.