Family Birthday!!

Today we traveled to Beckenham which turns out to be in the Borough of Bromley so not a new borough for us in this month of new adventures. Nevertheless Beckenham is one of those places I had never heard of before a few months ago. Susan's partner's parents have recently moved to London from South Africa and have rented a house in Beckenham which turns out to be a leafy suburb filled with parks. In fact on the way from the train station, we passed an inviting park entrance with a cottage at the gate, and we detoured through Kelsey Park with a lovely large lake amid woodsy paths and colourful gardens and grassy meadows.

We had no time to explore however because we were on our way to a birthday party for Susan's partner Cato hosted by his parents. We had such a wonderful afternoon with a great Sunday roast and two birthday cakes and Pimm's cup expertly mixed by Susan and filled with all the proper fruits and cucumber. The cucumber does make such a difference.

Cato's big present was a breadmaking machine, so Susan was thrilled. Cato was thrilled at the prospect of fresh bread. Most everyone was African, so the popular present was the biltong meat. On Susan's advice, we gave him a book on The 300 Beers to Try Before You Die. He was able to check one off immediately because his mother had given him a bottle of one of the ales in the book because she liked the name — Hobgoblin — and label picture.

We couldn't have had a nicer day celebrating a happy birthday.

PS. I have finally uploaded photos from Bob's new phone and added some photos to the last two day's posts.