Hello, Hello.
It's good to be back,
It's good to be back.
Hello, Hello, Hello...
Did you miss me? (Yeah!)
While I was away,
Did you hang my picture
On your wall
Did you miss me? (Yeah!)
Every single day,
I bet you didn't miss me at all! (Yeah!)
I bet you didn't miss me at all.
As (the now disgraced) Gary Glitter used to sing "It's good to be back!" although the Sock has been awake since 3.00pm as her body clock is well up the creek. Not helped by a 13 hour flight from hot and very humid Singapore which arrived at a freezing and frosty Heathrow at 5.30 a.m. yesterday. The pilot informed that it might be a bit bumpy going over Afghanistan and he wasn't wrong there - the bumps started somewhere near India where apparently there was a cyclone or something going on and didn't actually finish until the plane flew over Germany. The good news being that even the Sock's fear of flying couldn't be sustained for that length of time and she just got used to it but couldn't sleep on the plane.
Although the Sock felt ready to come home and was missing her little fur babies dreadfully the fascination of being back has already worn off. The cats have been remarkably disloyal in the Socks' absence and gave all their love to Auntie Debbie who texted every week to say how happy they all were! Just a little bit of pining for the Socks would have been nice.
Now the impending doom of Christmas is upon us. We pretty much avoided the "Festive" build up with things being reasonably low key Chrimbo-wise in Australia (at least during November) but the last two days in Singapore made up for that. There were hideously overblown tat decorations everywhere in particular down the main shopping mecca of Orchard Road! (The woman in the pink shirt is not the Sock!!)

Worse was to follow! The Socks fulfilled one of their holiday ambitions to have Singapore Slings at the Raffles Hotel. Based on having watched Tenko the Sock had imagined sipping her cocktail in old colonial splendour... rattan chairs, ceiling fans, cool linen clothes and an oriental ambience. What she got was a weak cocktail, bored barman and a loud muzac version of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" blaring through the bar!
Singapore is a strange place... massive tree planting schemes over the past four decades have created a "green city" overflowing with lush plantings squeezed into every nook and cranny. But it feels false and slightly threatening like an episode of the Prisoner. A feeling added to by the insistence of all the Singaporeans the Socks met talking at length about how wonderful Singapore is, how rich it is, how happy the people are and that this is because "we don't have too many civil rights", "we don't pay people not to work by giving them state handouts", "we work hard and pursue our education" all said implying (in the most charming way) that these are problems that Britain has. The Sock thinks that either they have all been brainwashed or they are genuinely happy because they don't suffer from Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) as they are on the equator and have a dawn to dusk that runs from 7.00am to 7.00pm every day of the year.
The Singapore Botanic Gardens are however a great place to visit with an outstanding orchid garden which made the stopover worth it.
Apologies for not responding to any of the comments made whilst the Sock was away. Access to the internet was limited to two slots of 20 minutes over the five weeks - at least one addiction the Sock was able to train herself off for the duration. Sadly this may have been replaced by an addiction to daytime TV and the Brangelina/Jen triangle!!!!