Final goodbye

After dinner tonight, I said goodnight to Bob for the last time this trip. He leaves for Japan tomorrow morning then, after a brief and unexpected stopover in Tokyo, heads for home. He is the last of our Chrissy guests. It’s going to feel a bit quiet around the house from now on.

His unexpected stopover was due to a plane being cancelled. It was his flight from London to Narita where he was due to change planes with the normal brief stop for fuel. This plane, however, was cancelled and so his travel agent told him he’d have to catch an earlier plane to Haneda then get a coach to Narita where he’d be something like six hours early.

This caused a bit of consternation but was soon seen as an opportunity to see a bit of Japan rather than just hanging out in the Business Class Lounge for half a day. This afternoon I put the cherry on top of the rather dubious icing by telling him I’d found an aeronautical museum not far from Narita airport. It sounded perfect and is only a fifteen minute taxi ride from the airport.

He was very pleased with this and started planning his excursion.

This discussion took place after our Japanese Feast which I prepared for his going away. He ate everything except for the seaweed which he was happily eating until I stupidly said it was seaweed. At this point he replaced the lid on his miso bowl and declared he was finished.

Mind you, he hadn’t actually finished because there was the cheesecake I made yesterday. The one that took 24 hours to set. The one that didn’t set and was, basically, a big splodgy mess. It did taste good and we each had some but, overall, the gelatine didn’t ‘take’ and so it refused to defy gravity in a very big way. This is nothing new as I’ve had gelatine based failures previously.

Anyway, the less said about that, the better. Bob enjoyed the meal and ate it all with chopsticks (well apart from the almost liquid cheesecake) and that’s all that matters really.

For his last day in Farnham he went for a walk over Hankley with Mirinda and the girls. Fortunately it was a glorious afternoon; perfect walking weather. They all loved it.

All in all it was a lovely day tinged with only the slightest bit of sadness…and a fluid cheesecake.