I can't believe how busy we've been! We left Norwich on Friday morning with a care pack from Tony's cousin Dennis (he couldn't believe we'd start off on a journey without three or four tons of food to sustain us). It was a little bit of an emotional farewell and we were sorry to leave. We had an easy drive through to Whitstable and arrived about 3.00pm. Penny's house is more like a drop in centre and it wasn't long before we met four thousand or so relatives. We returned Penny's key and chatted in the garden for a while.

The next day was Penny's birthday (an important event on the world calendar) and once she had finished demanding presents, we picked Geoff up from the train station and went out for lunch. We got back just in time to beat the start of guests arriving to celebrate. What a night! My relatives are still completely mental - it's nice to know that some things don't change. My cousin Howard threw out a challenge to see how many people could do a headstand and press ups and naturally several of the boys took up the gauntlet. This was when it was still daylight and it only got sillier from there. We had some sky lanterns for Penny's birthday but it was windy outside so the boys decided that starting them off inside would be a good idea. Once the sky lantern was full of warm air, they carefully manouevered it outside and let it go... it floated gracefully as far as the roofline where it caught on the gutter, dragged across the roof and landed in the next door neighbours tree to burn itself out. Undeterred, the boys then decided to try again. This time they let the air fill up a bit more and they got almost to the door before the burning block fell out of the lantern and on to the laminate floor. Several seconds of the boys jumping around like fleas produced little other than moving the burning block from place to place. Fortunately Tony had the presence of mind to chuck his beer onto it but not before one of the James' had almost melted his trainer to his foot. Then Howard bailed me up in a corner and tried to get me to drink with him. I don't know what it is about me but I seem to be the person who people universally would most like to see drunk. Anyway, I told Howard that he could put vodka in my orange juice if it made him happy and then he tried to make me scull. I continued to sip at my drink while he continued to harangue me but it ended up with him making me laugh and me spitting the drink into his face. In a demonstration of what I'd done to him, he managed to spit half a glass of drink at me! We all had a great laugh and it was like stripping back thirty years. The last people left at 3.00am and we staggered to bed.

The next day we started slowly but I caught up with one of my uncles and some cousins down at the local bowling alley before going on to an extended family gathering complete with afternoon tea and old photos on a big screen. Lots of poring over family trees and exchanging stories - it was really lovely. We finished the night with kebabs and cards and flopped into bed once again.

Today has been a nice easy day of catching up with still more cousins (this has resulted in a date for a pub crawl on Saturday!) and a lovely roast dinner cooked by Penny's partner Paul. We were ready for a quiet night and that's what we've had. Off to Canterbury tomorrow - we'll see if Penny is as good a tour guide as Tony's cousin Dennis.

P.S. The weather has been amazingly good! We keep expecting to wake up to thunderstorms because it's just been too good for too long.