Updated
October 14, 2006

Filley came to UK in July, saw a CLA Game Fair, helped clear and clean the house in Basingstoke when it was sold - load the container, sight see & visit the family

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Filley enjoyed the UK, she loves meeting people, we visited my parents - Father in Bognor and Mother in Whitchurch with their respective partners.

We went to Bounemouth to visit Helen my ex wife and see thye children who had gathered around her during the holidays. Adam back from Gambia, Owen from China and India who has jsut finished her Degree in Manchester.

Basingstoke Station

Blackberry harvest

While at Uncle Teds I got to meet an very dear old friend. Snippet was my Jack Russell terrier for many years, but has adopted my Uncle as her new 'Dad'

They are constant companions and great friends & unlike me he doesn't go off to Gambia for months at a time.

In liverpool we visited the Maritime Museum


With Ghosts of Sailors past

A Cunard momento of a liner trip to Africa.

The reality of slavery is something most Gambians are unaware of - it was shocking but enthralling for Filley who had no idea about the scale of the trade or teh part paid by her African ancestors in the sale of Slaves to the European traders.

Shrewsbury Abbey close to Cliff's house

Cliff and Bian put on a special Marriage feast for us when we arrived

A big Pilke caught just above the railway bridge.

Comments to GTS

The following page is a condensed visual version of a very crammed trip.

It was great having Filley over in time to see The CLA GameFair and the hectic weeks before hand - she couldn't believe the work involved from 7 in the morning till 7 at night either in the office or at home laminating exhibitor markers or updating the site map.

In mid July, Filley got to 'enjoy' life in a BunkaBin (a small metal container with 2 beds and a toilet and shower) Not the most comfortable of lifestyles for over two weeks but convieniently close to the Fair and at Romsey close to the town to get evening meals.

The experience is pretty over whelming and it was only after it, that I realised that we had no pictures at all - maybe next year if the CLA has me back. This was my last Gamefair as a proper CLA employee, I officially retired on the last day of August 2006 to spend more time with the charity in Gambia.

Getting a Visa for the visit was actually no problem apart from the preliminaries of getting a passport - where Filley came to see the problems faced by Europeans in teh face of a corrupt official, who fully intended to keep her money and provide no passport - Filley got her money back eventually and withing 24 hours had her passport processed as it should have been by an efficient officer doing his job correctly. The corrupt official SADLY still there and sadly probably cheating local Gambians and Europeans whenever the opportunity arises.

Really Filley's holiday started when the GF finished and I had more proper time with her.

Our first real trip out was to London and a trip by train, Gambia has no railways so it was quite a novelty. We did the sights and met a lovely couple hoping to make a film in Gambia.

The Blackberries were particularly good this year and we harvested container after container and ate them raw with Ice Cream or cooked and seived as Blackberry Fool - Packing boxes ready to fill the container hampered us as cooking things we needed kept getting packed in boxes

After the GF we did get a couple of days away to visit Harewood the site of next years Fair, we stayed at the Harewood Arms very close to the site. Filley enjoyed the hotel room and a couple of evenings out at a local Italian Restaurant. Though like me she felt the food was over priced and small portions.

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We visited my Aunt Eve and Ted (her husband) and had a lovely day in Shugborough House where Ted does much of his painting now he is retired.

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We had lunch at Mrs Meakes a lunch time haunt of Teds and close to the house, It was a lovely day out and it gave Filley the chance to see how our English upper classes lived and to a certain extent still live now.

Once the container was packed and transported we moved up to Shropshire to spend the last few weeks with my mother and step father Peter who has for several years very efficiently acted as the membership secretary for GTS.

My mother has suffered badly from macular degeneration of the eyes leaving her almost blind, but she got on with Filley as if they had known each other for years.

We took a day out to visit Liverpool partly to see the Museum on Slavery and also to meet up with David and Pamela Brodie to discuss the future of Brufut 3, which requires some serious roofing work, as termites have over the years eaten away the palm roof beams.

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It was a very pleasant day out, Pamel has started a mid wifery course in Liverpool and the Brodies still hope to return to Gambia in the future to start a clinic or someother charitable venture.

Filley and I were booked in for an intensive weekend in Shrewsbury at my uncle Cliffs, near the Abbey, now famous as the venue for the Caedfael Books by Ellis Peters.

Cliff and his assistant Bian have been working very hard at preparing a 12 day teacher training course for GETSuk. This is to introduce the working methods Cliff used in Japan to teach Japanese children who had no exposure at all to English. The methods were most successful there and have the enormous advantage of needing almost no comsumable resources - a massive bonus in a country where the answer always seems to be MORE money.

The cost of providing each teacher with what they need as a teachers resource kit is well under £50 and if looked after and not lost or sold should last them a life time of teaching English.

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