Tristan's twelfth birthday!

Tris just managed to sandwich being twelve between laser quest and going skiing with his school - it's a tough life in Year 7!

Star Trooper!

Tris took his friends to Star Trooper for his birthday: An underground, maze of rooms, barrels, barriers, dried ice and people armed with laser guns. Lou and I would clearly have preferred two hours of Beijing Opera but somehow, we forced ourselves ...

Second visa run to Hong Kong

Tim has a business visa which runs until November but the family are still on tourist visas which have to be renewed outside China (or at least in Hong Kong) every three months. We had been hoping that the registration of Tim's company's Representative Office in Beijing would mean that everyone would be able to get residency permits - that should be the case but it didn't happen quite quickly enough to avoid this run. We went on the Sunday and returned on Tuesday night, managing to fit in an outdoor swim while we were there.

Verity's second fitting

David & Ros paid for Verity to have a dress made - this was her second fitting.

Theo's fourth birthday!

Theo's Pirate Party was a raging success though staying up until 2am preparing the room and then getting up at 6:30 on what was also Valentine's Day was a bit of a stretch for Tim & Lou. We particularly enjoyed the game of battleships involving two sofas, back to back, a few feet apart and large numbers of children armed with newspaper balls.

Piracy - a piece of cake

It is difficult to get cake ingredients in China but Lou managed - somehow.

There's snow place like home

I went back to the UK for 9 days which coincided with heavy snow. On the Monday, I was due to take a group to see the Byzantium Exhibition at the Royal Academy but they couldn't open because not enough Security Guards had made it in so we went over the road to Fortnum's. The Queen's grocers were very pleased to see me in a pinstripe suit with a set of clearly well-heeled foreign visitors - the Manager came to apologise for the fact that not all of their floors were open and then opened one floor specially for us. Later in the week, we took them to Cirque du Soleil and Oxford where we met with some of the companies who we incubate. This photo was taken with my phone in the Old Bank Hotel on the High which looked Dickensian with the snow falling outside.