Position: 50:49:45N 00:16:09W

I flew back into a sunny England and arrived early on Sunday 19^th April.  Sarah met me at the airport, and although I was expecting to see my girls waving their pink pirate flag at Arrivals, Sarah was alone!  It turned out the girls didn’t want to come to the airport as they were too busy playing at Grandad’s…  England was much as I expected and there was no real shock at arriving into a different climate.  The only thing I found was that everyone drives so fast – I had to ask Sarah to slow down on the motorway!

Back in Shoreham, it was as if I’d never been away, but it was really lovely to see Dad and Margaret, and Will, Louisa and the boys, and to see my girls again.  We are staying at Dad’s house until June when our tenant moves out of our house.  I think it is a relief for my Dad to have me where he can see me again!

Shoreham itself was just as lovely as we’d remembered.  The South Downs, the river, and the beach were all just as picturesque as they were before, and we nipped down to the beach hut and found it didn’t really look like it had suffered a year of neglect.  Dad had had to replace all the locks on it as someone had broken into it last winter but they hadn’t damaged it.  It has been quite sunny and although it is obviously colder here, it isn’t a great shock – although I did find it amusing to see people preparing barbeques in what to me felt like Arctic weather, the first few days I was back!  It did seem funny to see the girls dressed in so many clothes after spending months running round in their swimming costumes.

Monday 20^th April was the day that had shaped our plans since before we left the UK last year.  This was Emilia’s first day at school.  She was extremely excited and after several dress rehearsals involving her putting on her entire uniform several times, she was ready, and we walked her to school.  I was really pleased that we were all together for this moment.  The whole thing went fine, and Emilia was really mature about the whole thing, with no tears.

Trying on the school uniform

Walking to school on Emilia’s first day

I think I found the whole thing more intimidating than Emilia did – the mums at the school gate look like a force to be reckoned with!  People dress up here a lot more than we’ve been used to.

Straight from dropping Millie off, we drove into Brighton to the Eye Hospital, where I was seen by (thankfully) a really good eye doctor called Sarah Vickers who instilled lots of confidence.  She was a formidable woman who seemed to have four or five cowed students trailing in her wake wherever she went.  Even better, she sailed and had been to Antigua so she knew exactly what the light conditions were like, and fully understood what was involved in my wish to sail back from the Azores.  

I had a full eye examination, which involved some painful “manipulation” of the eyeball, and she declared that I had had a “very, very bad” case of uveitis.  I’ve been left with a ring of scar tissue on my lens of my left eye but somehow, through luck, it does not appear to have affected my vision (which is contrary to what I’d been told in the Caribbean).  She got each of her students to have a look as it was an “interesting” case, and then let Sarah have a look as well, which was useful.

In order to force a decision on whether I could do the Azores trip or not, she decided to radically reduce the frequency of my eye drops (hurrah!) to see if this triggered a recurrence or not.  Writing two weeks on, it hasn’t, which is great, so I am going back out to the Azores on Sunday 17^th to meet the boat.  She has given me a full set of “just in case” drugs – steroids and dilation drops – to take with me.

On cause, we drew a blank.  They did a whole load of blood tests for anything and everything, but nothing came up.  So we still don’t know what caused it.  I’m going to have an MRI scan on my back to see if there is any Ankylosing Spondilitis, but my guess is they won’t find anything.  Hmm. Oh well – just glad that it is better.  I am not regretting the decision to fly home.

Back to Shoreham with my pupils the size of saucers from the dilation drops, and everything very blurry.  We picked Millie up and we couldn’t have asked for a happier girl.  I asked her what the best bit of her day was and she said “everything”!  Quite impressive for a first day at school – it certainly could have been a lot worse!  Two weeks on, she has continued to really enjoy school and appears to have fitted in well both socially and educationally.  Whilst we spent a lot of time discussing whether or not our trip would be beneficial or detrimental to our girls, I think this has been proof that it has actually benefited them massively.  Millie was a shy, quite unconfident girl before we left but now has bags of confidence and loves school.  The school itself seems great – really vibrant with an impressive head teacher.

Jemima has been keen not to miss out on school and luckily Aunty Ouisa had a spare place at her pre-school, so Jemima is now going there 3 afternoons a week and also loves it.

Sarah is re-mobilising Thumbkin (www.thumbkin.co.uk) and has managed to get a place at a prestigious trade fair later in the year, and is pushing ahead with a new range of slippers, as well as starting to plan her sales campaign for existing products.  She seems to be spending more nights out on socials than in!

I have spent the last three weeks helping my brother Will out on his kitchen & bathroom refurbishment business and have loved it – it’s so nice doing hands-on manual work with a tangible outcome!  And I think Will has enjoyed being able to tell his little brother what to do all day…

So the plan for the next few weeks is for Sarah and the girls to continue with the daily routine of school, nursery and Thumbkin, while I leave them and fly out to Lisbon Sunday night, then onto Horta Monday morning, where hopefully Nutmeg will be waiting.  The delivery crew have had a very long trip from Antigua, as they rang last Saturday and said that they still had 850 miles to go - so it will have taken them just under four weeks!  The two weeks up to last Saturday they appeared to have averaged 72 miles a day, so I will be interested to know what the conditions were.  I think it was NE winds for most of the way so I assume they have had to beat for most of the trip.  I am glad I am not doing this leg!

The original plan was that we would sail into Plymouth for the start of the half-term week, where we would join Dad and Sarah’s dad on their respective boats.  However, I don’t think we will arrive back until late in that week, or possibly the weekend of 30/31^st May, so we may end up sailing direct back to Chichester or even Shoreham. 

I am starting back at work on Tuesday 2^nd June.  I had a chat with my career counselor and he indicated that I would likely be taking on the delivery lead role for an insurance company in London.  This could be good or it could be painful but I will wait and see.  Certainly the business environment seems a little grim in the UK at present so I am sure it isn’t the time to be choosy.  However, prospects of career progression evaporate in times like this so it is also not particularly clever to be in a tough role where there is limited to no opportunity for recognition, and a lot of hard work and sacrifices.  I am not looking forward to having my success and happiness dictated by others.

We get our house back on 7^th June and Sarah is already making plans to do various things to it.  Or at least, plans for me to do various things to it.  There are also ominous noises about various pets – cats, dogs and chickens have been mentioned so far!!

I will write the next blog update hopefully from Horta.