Melbourne & back

Back in the UK after 2 months in Melbourne.
Highlights included:
- Catching up with family and friends, most of them several times
- Catching up on 15 months of sleeping in
- Winning 2 things in 2 days in 2 competitions I didn't know I had entered: the novel Wolf of the Plains (based on the early life of Genghis Khan, I highly recommend it) and a Thermos bottle and matching cups
- Playing a set against former badminton Commonwealth gold medallist Silvia Ng (lost, of course)
- Having a hot stones massage, which turned out to be a normal massage using hot stones rather than what you see in pictures of stones placed at particularly places on your body
- Spending a couple of days with Ma's old school friends and listening to their fascinating stories of how daughters were treated like second class citizens just a generation ago

Last weekend I celebrated my birthday by treating myself to a show. I went to see The Sound of Music. I was interested to see what differences there were from the original show and the movie. As the movie has become such a classic, many of the changes that were made to the original stage show have stayed. For example, Maria sings I Have Confidence, which didn't exist in the original show, she and the children sing My Favourite Things on the bed in the thunderstorm but Mother Superior also sings it, which is where it originally was while The Lonely Goatherd was the song sung in the bedroom. Frau Schraeder and Uncle Max sing a couple of songs, which they don't do in the movie so no-one knows these songs. It was quite strange.
Sei Sum arrived in London to begin her Europe tour. I met her and a friend of hers for dinner.
On Sunday, I intended to visit Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill. Having looked up the directions to get there on their website, I arrived at Oxford station only to find that their directions were not as clear and accurate as they could be. The buses run from a different station on Sundays and instead of running every half hour, there is a 1 1/2 hour gap in the schedule in the middle of the day on Sundays. Of course, I arrived at the bus station just as the last bus of the morning was pulling away up the street. The next bus was so much later that I ended up visiting some of the Oxford sites I visited last time, including Radcliffe Camera and St Mary's. Finally, I got to Blenheim Palace, which is an incredible estate. It is the family estate of the Duke of Marlborough and the family is actually called Spencer Churchill. The first Duke's son died and one of his daughters became the first Duchess in her own right. She was married to one of the Spencers, Princess Diana's ancestors. A few generations later, the family applied to change their name to Spencer Churchill to honour the original Duke's surname. Winston Churchill's father was a younger son of the 7th Duke. The estate is enormous, the house is about 500m from the front gate and the rose garden is about 300m from the back door with other gardens and lakes further out. The difference between the wealthy and poor in Britain is very pronounced indeed.
Just a comment on travelling on public transport in peak hour in London. I can understand how Taffy feels. There are certainly a lot of idiots out there. The other week, I was waiting for a train at London Bridge and when it came, everyone bunched around the doors. One stupid woman stood in front of the doors with her handbag on the ground in between her legs. She was not actually getting on the train, just getting in the way of everyone else. Then she had the nerve to grumble out loud that people were crushing her. What the...?! Unbelievable!