Blogs from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, United Kingdom, Europe

Oxfam Wood Green’s shop manager had decided to take us to Southend for the annual summer excursion in 2014. I had noticed that it would be more convenient to travel to Southend from Fenchurch Street near Tower Hill rather than from Liverpool Street. He got the tickets for us to travel with the c2c train from Fenchurch Street to Southend Central on 31 August. Southend seems to be smaller and more compact than Brighton – a few-minutes’ walk from the station brought us to the seaside and viewpoint to the Southend Pier. Like Brighton, there was a fun-fair with various rides, stalls and arcade centres. Some of young volunteers were interested in these kinds of things and they entered the fun-fair while we were walking on the seaside. There was nothing interesting on the east edge ... read more

Where to start?? A question that applies to this blog as well as to planning our trip! Travelling was never on my list of 'to do's', I've worked hard, and enjoyed it (mostly), but most of my earnings just went towards the upkeep of my flat and perhaps a week in the sun or, more recently, walking holidays. Then I met Steve and learned that he has, for a long time, had a dream of travelling Europe in a camper van! He's far more widely travelled than me to begin with, this not being difficult as I had never ventured further than a Greek Island when we planned our first holiday together last year to Vietnam! What an amazing holiday that was, a fantastically diverse country, and definitely sparked a desire (and a confidence: long haul ... read more

Here I was, with 2000 raving Tottenham fans, surrounded by 72000 jeering Manchester United followers. All adorned in their proper colors. I'm not in America anymore. But I'll back up. I left America, which was very tearful and depressing. It's hard to imagine how long this year will be, how much will change in this year. How much will stay the same at this time of “transition” for all of us? All my friends will live yet another year without me. I'll come back home and need to be prompted of a whole years happenings in a few meager hang outs and then go back to Purchase, where I'm sure even more of my friends will have dropped out or left. But I have to stop thinking about that. I'm doing awesome things. I'll be ... read more

still here... read more

I’ve now packed up work and I was in full preparation for a boot sale filled weekend. For those in the USA boot sales are a little like yard sales, we drive our cars in convoy at 5:30am to a large field unpack our boots and sell out wares from any old table or rail we can lay our hands on. It’s usually freezing cold too so we hop from one foot to another whilst attempting to smile and negotiate a decent price for a CD we’ve already attempted to sell on Ebay twice. As it happens a few drinks in the pub on Thursday afternoon to bid farewell to my cracking colleagues actually ended up with me drinking far too much wine, falling through the door totally drunk to the point where my husband put ... read more