What a week….or rather what a few days. And it all started off so well. On Friday afternoon we drive up to Universal City in the Hollywood Hills to celebrate Bennett’s 12 birthday weekend at Universal Studios.

We spend just about all day Saturday at the movie/tv studios-cum-theme park and blast our way through just about every amazing “virtual” ride the theme park has to offer including the backlot tour. With our magical “Express Pass”, we skip the long lines everywhere except for the newest attraction - a Super Marios virtual reality ride where the line is more than 2 hours long and Express Passes don’t count. Skipped that! 

The day (Saturday, October 21) also happened to be the 52nd anniversary of our first meeting while en route to the Taj Mahal and the 12th anniversary (about 5 days late) of the day we beat a hasty exit from India because of Bennett’s imminent (3 week early) arrival!

Back home and asleep on Sunday night when just around 11pm, Lynda my sister call from London to tell us that Mervyn, her husband of 53 years, is in hospital, has had a massive heart attack and the “crash team” is trying to resuscitate him. A couple of hours later, we get the call that Mervyn has passed away. Sudden and completely unexpected with no history of heart disease. Then a few hours later in the early morning, we get the news that Bob, our dear friend and neighbour died peacefully after a long and painful illness late Sunday evening surrounded by his family. 

A flurry of activity follows. We are able to hastily rearrange our travel plans and early afternoon, we head for Los Angeles airport (together with Benjamin) for an early evening flight to London where we’ll arrive in time for Mervyn’s funeral and the first two nights of shiva, the traditional period of mourning.

And Tuesday evening we are booked to fly to Sydney. That now happens Thursday evening flying back from London to LA (10 hours) and on to Sydney (another 15 hours) arriving Saturday morning rather than Thursday as planned. Twenty-five hours of flying interrupted by a 3 hour layover at LAX. Small wonder that we're wiped out by the time we make it home in Sydney!

And of course, the bathroom remodel is still not finished and more than 3 months since the installation and the solar panels are still not switched on.....