Alright, I give in. So many people  have complained that we have dared not update the blog [to London and then home] I have succumbed. So yes, we went to London and now we are home in Melbourne. Well, Jon and Jan are home. Jack starts work in Paris next week and is staying on in France for a while.

We drove from Paris to Normandy, stayed a few nights around Bayeux and caught the ferry from Caen. Driving on the right side of the road after five months of strenuous caution was a relief. Roundabouts posed a problem for a day or two as I continued to think I needed to keep my drivers door in the gutter and my passenger out in the middle of the road. Not appreciated by Jan or other drivers!

After a few nights in Devon, London was a quick trip away, via Stonehenge. We paraded around London for a day with the car, posing for snapshots at Westminister and Big Ben [allowed by the anti-terror police] and Buck Palace [not allowed by the police]. Then Ping the unstoppable was steam cleaned for Australian quarantine and handed over to the shipping people who have popped Ping in a box and sent him on his way to Melbourne.

Saying goodbye to Jack was extra hard, and now we are home we miss him even more.  Life - and work - resumes. The book contract says I am supposed to have a finished manuscript ready in an unrealistically short time. So no more on-line, energy and attention needed elsewhere.

Thank you all - and thank you again - for the amazing response we got to a blog that never expected to achieve a fraction of this notoriety or attention. It has been a blast from beginning to end and I pinch myself every day to make sure it was all real.

I would love to pop some photos of London or Paris online but there has been an unfortunate clash of software updates and it is not possible to just whack them on anymore. Sorry, I have spent hours trying to make it work and finding out the reason it does not.

2009 welcomed from Paris, where Jan and I are tucked away fighting a lergy of the most ferocious sort. So far Jack has been immune, thank goodness. We have managed a few little wanders out into the neighbourhood, as far a the pharmacy [!!!] and some local eateries. A miserable way to spend time in Paris, I assure you all. Jack is having a ball catching up with friends, local and tourists and polishing his francais.

Despite the flu, we enjoyed a magnificent Christmas dinner - dips, olives, prawns, snails, oysters, soup, turkey with veg, salads, puddings, ice creams, cheese, chocolates…. and those marzipan fruits that make your teeth hum. Didn’t eat again for days. Now we need to stop coughing long enough to get back into Ping the car and make it to London some time in the next week.