Minehead my starting point

Last week Emily and I had a fun week. After picking up the hire car from Paddington, we had to leave London without going through central London, otherwise you get charged fifteen pounds for the privilege. It’s called congestion tax. Pity if you’re a tradie or delivering something. I guess you would pass it on. Oh!and if you drive an older vehicle, you pay an extra twelve pounds and fifty pence daily for ULEZ. What’s that you’re asking me,ultra low emission zone. Don’t tell anyone, I’d hate the city councils in Australia to find out. I actually met an Irish man called Patrick, true story, who bought a 2010 Mazda. A beautiful car,but he can’t afford to drive it anywhere. Even in Bristol, which is not really a big city charges the same taxes. So I guess they do it in all the cities. Bristol was only nine pounds. Public transport is a cheaper option. However, it is also quite expensive. Two pounds for each bus ride. You need to catch a few to get across town. There is no shortage of those big red double deckers. There must be thousands of them. You can see up to 10 or 12 at any given time when you’re at a large roundabout. Any way, getting back to our road trip, we took a while to escape the busy roads of London, and it was blissful to be driving along country roads and driving through all the villages to Stratford upon Avon. Along the way we stopped at the fox inn and had a pub lunch. We had parsnip soup. I’d never had it before. Really nice, with a roast meat sandwich. The funny part was, the fox inn was connected to the fox house. I pulled up,got out of the car,opened the door, and as I walked in,this poor pommy man shit himself, wondering why some Aussie rat bag came barging into his house. When I realised, I said, sorry mate, and Emily and I closed his door and went next door. We got to Stratford later in the day,checked in and walked for 10 minutes,and ended up at the dirty duck. Met up with Jessica, who Gayle and I met 38 years ago when she was a beautiful young lady. She still is, just a teeny bit older, like the rest of us. The next day Em and I went to jess’s house and here partner John joined us for a walk through the meadows and along the canal. We then had lovely leek and potato home made soup and sandwich at Jessica’s cottage for lunch. A rest in the afternoon for poor old me while Emily and Jessica played scrabble. Later that night,we all went to the theatre, after a couple of pints at the dirty duck. As you would. The next day Emily and I left Stratford and headed to Cambridge. We stopped at some amazing places along the way. Again that night, had a pint,and pizza for dinner. We left early the next morning, and joined the morning rush hours back to London town. The first 80 kilometres took an hour, the last 10 kilometres took more than an hour. Never mind, we had a fun time. The last few days before me catching a train to Bristol and onto Minehead were interesting. I don’t think I have enough time to tell you, but, keeping a long story short, the plumber came a couple of times to tend to the new washing machine, that keeps flooding the pizza shop below Emily’s unit. Then Emily had to ring the fire brigade as some clown living in the basement below the pizza shop, must have been burning tyres, as the pizza shop and the unit were choking in an insipid smell and smoke .I felt sorry for the pizza shop owner, as he was copping it from up above and below. Also, the cough I haven’t been able to shake, Emily got me to see the doctor. With the cold weather, I have a lung infection, so hopefully a bout of antibiotics will sort that out. After reluctantly hugging my beautiful daughter good bye, I caught the bus to Bristol. Met some great guys in the place I was staying. Two poms and an Irish man. They love their grog. I decided to start my antibiotics yesterday, so I don’t want to drink any alcohol. I’m going to look like a dickhead sitting in a pub,without a drink. I now have made it Minehead, the starting point of my eleven hundred kilometres. I hope I’m feeling well enough to start on Wednesday.