Update . . .

I realise I haven't written anything for a few days so thought I'd let you know how our weekend went. Grand Designs Live was good fun; plenty to see and also plenty of time to sit and chat too.

I hadn't been to the ExCel exhibition centre before and we were lucky that despite the earlier weather forecast, we had good weather for the drive up and back on the coach. It was interesting to see the 'regeneration' of London's Docklands first hand. Traffic wasn't too bad either although we were slowed a bit at one point by workers putting out barricades in anticipation of the London Marathon the following day.

We saw the great Kevin holding forth in front of an audience but decided not to stop but to try and see as much as possible. I had to nudge my friend a few times as she was getting stopped by salespeople keen to 'make a killing'. I had to repeat the Mantra, 'don't make eye contact, just walk purposefully by' several times!

And I managed to leave without buying anything except a few delicious home-made sweets, how about that for self-restraint?

Sunday's family visit also went well. We made such good time on the M1 (yes, no traffic problems on the M1, can you believe it?) that we had to stop and have a coffee (oh, I really suffered!) as we would have arrived too early otherwise.

It's a long time since I've been on the M1 as we don't usually have reason to go directly Northwards and my memories of the past times I've travelled this way are constant roadworks and continuous convoys of HGVs. Not this time. We couldn't believe how few goods vehicles we actually saw. The paterfamilias put it down to the recession - how sad if this is the case.