Flying Visit

This morning I checked the flight from Montreal was on time and left for Heathrow in heavy traffic. You can imagine the thoughts that run through my head when, half way there, the radio alerted that both runways were closed after a plane had made an emergency landing. Just as I arrived at terminal 5 my phone rang to say my nephew, Russell, had landed... in Cardiff.

What a shame, Russell is based in Cape Town and had a seven hour stop off on route back to South Africa. We'd arranged for his sister, Felicity, to join us back at my house for an all too infrequent reunion. I headed back home, cancelled my niece who's time would have been better spent studying for an exam on Tuesday and did some shopping instead. As I was putting my purchases away the phone rang to say Russell had got to Heathrow, Fizz fortunately had just passed Paddington so, could back track quickly to get the express to Heathrow and our meeting was back on. Happy times!

There wasn't time to come back here so we all decided to go to what I call Little India, normally known as Southall. It's a place I adore. It's a colourful district full of friendly people and hard to believe is part of the UK. The mosques, the temples, the food, clothes, jewelry and textiles are a world apart from anything even a couple of miles further a field. It's a place, in the UK, where being a caucasian sticks out like a sore thumb but feels totally at ease and welcomed.

Following an alley we found ourselves, very late for lunch, in this Afghan restaurant on the upper floor of a colourful market. None of us had tried the cuisine before. Delicious! We enjoyed our food, accompanied by a lovely yoghurt based drink, with a Asian program broadcasting from the wall with information about the accident that had occurred earlier.

A walk around the shops followed with an obligatory visit to a sweet shop for a cup of traditional Indian tea and some of the rich and sugary confectionary. All too soon it was time to return to the airport from where Russell would board his plane for yet another 12 hour flight, and Feliciy would catch a fifteen minute train home. It took me over an hour and a half to do the, usually, twenty minute journey in the Bank Holiday traffic".


I normally steer clear of politics but I'm compelled to say something here. I've found much of what I've read over the past couple of days very distressing and my visit to Southall today has reinforced my personal feeling.

My heart goes out to the family of our soldier whose life was so brutally taken. Those that took his life deserve whatever may come to them. It is so very wrong to label thousands of innocents, who are just and caring people, for the sins of a couple of extremists. We, upright and British, in history, have shed more blood and caused more change to foreign societies than they to ours. Reading through various posts on Facebook I have found, for the most part, hypocrisy and ignorance in it's purist form. A hate campaign that is brutal and unnecessary from people that call themselves Christians. I'm almost ashamed to be British.