What a huge honour – I managed to ram myself into Fi & Rich's social diary and become the first overnight guest at their AMAZING new pad in Henfield, Sussex. They have a long old drive and acres – actual acres! – of land, including meadows, a separate big building with garages and rooms above, outbuildings, a piggery, a big pondy-lake with a duck house (the politician's choice), loads of huge established trees and even the amusingly named Cluckingham Palace – a potential future home for chickens.
And of course – a mahusive house! In a spot of anticipated disarray given that they had moved in all of just 5 days earlier – I remember how long it took me & H to unpack all our boxes and find new homes for all our bits.. tee hee. But what a brilliant pad it will soon be, with fabulous outside space too. We had a pad around the land the next morning once the rain had stopped thundering down – Maddie soon made herself at home and was just about prevented from leaping into Ducky Pond.
Great to see them both and here's to the start of their new adventure!
From there, I headed into town to meet the 'two Helens' for a half term day out – this time to check out the new Battersea Powder Station. My god – hasn't it changed!!!
And how hugely lucky were we to go up in Lift 109 (so named as it goes up a chimney 109m tall) just at the moment when the sun came out!! Now there's a rare October treat….
And the views are better than I had expected, although I did spend part of my 7 minute 'flight time' trying to cheer up a poor man who was terrified of heights and had been bought the ticket for his 60th birthday by his wife (who was there too, ignoring him, sitting with his head in his hands, shaking!)
Had a late lunch after at one of the many restaurants, having dragged the two Helens into Aesop to experience the magic of their best selling product, Poo Juice. Yes – really! Always fab to see these two, next trip is up the Shard (again, for me) in Dec.
And I couldn't resist adding this final pic of great-niece Lettie. Was her 4th birthday last weekend and HOW excited was she? I didn't join them for the very wet kids' picnic in a random park 2 hours journey away (how did I resist that one?!) but would have loved to have seen her in person. What a total cutey-pops x