Our first Sunday started nice and slow, and well deservedly – it is hard to strike the balance between pushing through the jet lag and completely overdoing it and becoming exhausted. Cameron took Maggie and Tamsin down to the gym for a run on the treadmills (T in particular is vile if she isn’t exercised regularly) and Jenny and I wrote about our ‘holiday’ for her teacher. Not that it was much of a holiday, but we pulled together some photos of Chester to show.

Brunch at ‘element fresh’ – we even have a points card now, you know – then we walked a few blocks west through stifling humidity to find the Yu Gardens. The crowds were bonkers. Jenny held on very tight to my hand but Tamsin really didn’t like it, even when a jolly old man gave her a big thumbs up. She was enormously amused by the giggling teenage girls who wanted to take our photograph though. After gawping at more fish than we have ever seen in one place, we decided to skip the garden proper this time (queues, heat), instead wandering around the nice buildings, which incongruously house Starbucks and KFC amongst the crafts and tourist tat, eventually ending up in ‘chatting’ cafe for chocolate icecream (kids) and cucumber lemon iced tea (grown ups), which was very delicious. Then scuttled home to the nice aircon.

I feel I should apologise for the state of my photos – those taken on my phone are OK but the ones off my big-girl camera are very iffy. The focus has broken on my lens (need a new lens!) and is very hit or miss, and photoshop is on my PC, which is in a shipping container still in Liverpool. Things should improve. I probably have some sort of editing software on my laptop … should really have a look.

Today, they all went off at 730 to school and work, leaving me here. OK so far …