We hurtled down the hills on our bikes, then I less impressively crawled up them. We were on our way to the station, it was taking longer than expected, we were going to miss our train. We arrived with seconds to spare, locked our bikes and were confronted by a queue for tickets, we waited with nervous energy from the ride, then when we got to the front were told we had to use the ticket machine. Luckily after all that our train was 5 minutes late and we found ourselves whisked away from the woods to London.

It was Dylan’s early birthday treat, a surprise west end show, the book of Mormon written by the creators of South park. The tickets were cheaper than the exorbitant train tickets!

A grey sky and the place was packed with tourists. It was funny to pass places that were familiar from 7 years ago with my mother, oh yeah there’s old big Ben again, I guess I should have a photo everyone else is. Dylan saw the queen in a car window, she didn’t spare a wave for her antipodean subjects.

The show itself was a hoot, Dylan loved it which was a relief, you never know with musicals. Then it was rushing off to catch the train again.

It was fun, but with the grey day, the expensive food and the rushing I began feeling nostalgia for the sunny relaxed days I spent with my mum in London, it had been more rose coloured then. I gulped back a throat full of homesickness, that was for the people not the place. When we arrived back in our woodland, after a train ride seated on the floor, it was almost a kind of homecoming, familiar faces and a pretty place.