G'day, g'day, g'day, g'day .... Goodbye.

Sad weekend in the Partridge household, particulary for Charlotte. Our friends, the Linehan's (John, Ruth, Alec and Charlotte) are emigrating to Australia (Or in John's case, returning home). Charlotte and Charlotte have known each other since they were 4, so there were tears yesterday as they said their goodbyes.

Johnny and I used to hang out a fair bit as well, either sharing drinks on the train home or going to watch football down the pub, or just taking the girls for a walk with my dogs. Being Aussie, Johnny always greeted me with "G'day, g'day, g'day, g'day" and then invariably called me "dude" ... And it didn't matter where we were going, he always had a rucksack and a bottle of water on him - even if it was 1/2 mile walk to the library, Johhny would be prepared as if he's going to be stranded in the outback.

Charlotte's going to miss Charlotte, and I'm going to miss Johnny (And we're all going to miss the Linehan family).

Johnny has given me his sat-nav, which after being so dismissive of over the years, I've actually quite enjoyed playing with. I've downloaded some hooky maps for it, and have updated all the software, and Bethany would have quite happily sat and watched it simulate the journey to Grandma and Grandad's had I let her ... All 5 hours of it. That said, we did use it going to Lakeside at the weekend and I made it recalculate its journey twice - doesn't it know that the M25 route is not a good one? Tsk ...

Friday night was spent down 'The Crown' for a 40th birthday of a friend of ours. Mia was pleased as the friend thought Mia was in her late 20's ... I did point out she was drunk, but Mia insists that she wasn't when she said it ... I was the designated driver, so spent the evening on Pepsi or Becks Alcohol-Free lager - but I still had a good time. I even got chatted up at the bar, and yes, she was drunk.

Charlotte was away all weekend with her class at an outward bounds place - sounds like she had a good time climbing, playing laser tag, doing the zip wire (And watching her headmistress scream her way down it), and breaking the assault course record with her class. Bethany swears blind that she didn't miss her at all, but there's a little fibbing going on there ...

Mia and I took the opportunity to redecorate Charlotte's room, so I spent Saturday evening ripping a cabin bed to pieces and then putting together the numerous bits of flat-pack furniture that Mia had bought in Ikea (And which took us 20 minutes to load in the car in such a way that we could still get 3 adults and 1 child in ..). I'd just like to thank Mr Black and Mr Decker for their wonderful electric screwdriver, and Mr Apple for his iPod - couldn't have done it without their help.