dear friend,

[In high school yearbook form]

Your visit totally rocked! Sorry that the weather wasn’t very cooperative during your 2-week stay but we hope you had a good time and that you are well fed. It feels good to retire my oven mitts for a few days.

It was fun singing-upon-singing unfinished songs in the car to keep the driver awake during the 3-hour drive back to Derby from Conwy. Too bad that playing Name that Time distracted the driver so much that we had to go turn around at the next traffic roundabout to retrace our steps back to the desired exit – whoops. Who would have thought the only songs we could finish to their entirety were the national anthems of Canada (in both languages, for some) and England? How pathetic are we?

Glad that you found Derby lively and entertaining. It’s hard to find people who share the same sentiments as you have about this Derbyshire capital. Trust me, I’ve looked…

I definitely enjoyed our day together walking through the city centre and looking at shoes with you. Why there are 3 Clarks shoe stores in little Derby still eludes me? And why we went into all of them twice without buying reminded me of how long we spent choosing Denby dishes for you to cart back on a trans-Atlantic flight ;)

You seemed to have fun at Lboro uni. and looking at the test facility. I kept myself entertained with the mega long Allan Key. I definitely like to tease The Lecturer.

Sorry that the Leicester market was too loud for you but we’re glad that you were able to supply an extra set of hands toting the bags of fresh produce back to the car. No funky purple fingers this time!



Our stop at Kirby Muxloe was lovely after the market.


Walking in Nottinghamshire was nice: complete with ice cream cones, sunshine (finally!), and a little horse. Glad we fulfilled your desire of visiting the Trip to Jerusalem pub but we were disappointed that you didn’t fulfil your beer-drinking quota during your visit here. Oh well, next time…



Glad that we finally experienced pub quizzes with you. We never seen you so excited before taking a test! Too bad we came in dead last both times, especially to the dismay of the person-who-has-never-failed-a-test-before-in-his-life we were with! Next time we’ll have to put more efforts into studying football and cricket teams, soap operas, and English history.

Have a nice summer. See you next year!

Helen
xx