Sandro had suggested we visit him in Cambridge. Albina and I had not seen hom for several months and we missed him. However, because of my wrist, I was not able to take the car. In fact, in the last week I had travelled to work by train. Similarly, in my visits to the dentist, to the kidney donor clinic and to Albina's check up on her post-operation progress, we had to travel by bus. The dentist at least sorted out the chip on my front tooth, caused by that accident when I fell on my face. The other visits had been positive for both of us, which was important to ensure our medical fitness, as we warned our clinicians in turn of our coming 80 day cruise.
Consequently, for those very reasons, Albina and I took a train to Cambridge, not the car. Unfortunately we made a mess of things at Kings Croos. By some strange misreading of the station departure board we turned up at platform 5 and caught the train at 09.12 as expected. Within minutes we discovered we were on a train to Peterborough, not Cambridge. Luckily it was a stopping train. We got off at Finsbury Park, and twenty five minutes later we caught another later train to Cambridge. We rang Sandro and luckily they had not yet left the house and were able to delay their journey to the station..
Eventually we turned up and I was stunned by how much the Cambridge station area had developed with new buildings and an extra island platform where previously there had been empty tracks and bleak fields beyond. I realized that in the last 30 years each trip to Cambridge had been by car and not by train. When had I last used the station there? Oh yes, it must have been in 1984 when I was the Labour candidate for Suffolk and South East Cambridgeshire in the Euro elections. Although Cambridge per se was not part of my campaign area, surrounding villges like Histon and Fulbourn very much were, and to reach them I would travel by train via Cambridge from my base in Ipswich.
We wandered around the streets and venerable colleges of Cambridge with their dark honey coloured facades, rich street markets, and green commons. Sandro invited us for a brunch at the Ivy Restaurant but Albina chose to pay the bill. The boutiques beckoned and Albina bought herself some warm leather boots for a Polish autumn. Then we took a bus to Sandro's house in Kings Hedges, a northern suburb of Cambridge.
Sandro and Liisa were in good form but with no definete plans about how they would find alternative jobs to improve on their present employment. Obviously with all the problem arising from increases in mortgage interest rates, even thinking of buying property was out of the question. They still do not know if their future is in England or Finland, where Liisa's family lives. Liisa has actually travelled to Finland four times this year for various family weddings, including her brother's, and Sandro has accompanied her twice, so their links there are very strong. But they will give Finland a miss for this Christmas and they suggested we four have Christmas together in Cambridge. That's a wonderful idea.
I have now completed the visa aplication forms for Albina and me to India and uploaded some photos. I need to check when we can lodge them at the High Commission Visa department in Hounslow. I can't yet prepare the application for visas to Egypt as they need a maximum 90 day period before our arrival there, so we will have to lodge that at the end of November. However I checked the U.S. Esta visa website and found that our application for a U.S. visa was approved. Slowly, slowly, we are getting there. The only other visa we will need is for China, but currently, with the zero-covid obsession in China, where whole cities of 20 million people can be closed at a moment's notice, means that no travel visas are being issued at all at the moment. So Shanghai remains on ice.
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