Nearly 50

Dear all,

Nice to see I'm in your thoughts. No big family party planned I'm afraid. Once upon a time I had visions of meeting you all in Phuket or somewhere but we would have all needed to have been saving for two years. Tomorrow we will be having a birthday cake, sharing with Lee (Jen's sister) who's birthday is on 29th October. I am organising a beer evening on Wednesday 27th after 10pm, probably at Ice Cold Beer, Singapore. A great hang out at the bottom of our road which happens to sell Fuller's London Pride, so if you're in town?

I'm off to Hong Kong on Thursday morning to participate in a regional round table about the future of lighting of people's homes, sponsored by Philip's ("up the PSV") and back on Saturday to what I believe may be a bit of a poorly kept surprise. I'm in the blurr about the details so that's OK.

Edge Hill. I used to love that part on the ride to and from Banbury; visions of racing a hill climb on my C15 with the megaphone blurting away, throttle hard against the stop as I wound my way up the hill and around the hairpin and up through the glade with the stone wall on the left. Riding towards Banbury was equally spectacular with the landscape opening up before me, hurtling down towards Anyho on that long drag reaching speeds close to 80mph.

On the domstic front, Claire has finished her end of year exams and is now looking forward to one more year in Primary School before she can step up into the big time. She's grown all round this year, in part due to the experience of participating in the World finals for Odessy of the Mind and Pokemon which required her to open up more nad make new friends. Daniel has two weeks to go until the end of term and will be facing his first exams for real this year as they stream the boys in Primary 2.

Jen and I are fine, I speak to Dad regularly and yes Steve, you missed my "Happy Birthday" call from Beijing.

That's it for now, keep on Skyping!

Love Nic, Jen, Claire and Daniel.