Today we all went off to Essex to visit my family.

Well I say “we all”, but Chrystal is away all weekend at an army cadet camp shooting at targets and going for 6:00am runs. And Charlie was spending the day with his real dad, so actually it was just three of us going there. And the only family was my Mum and her husband because my nephew and one of my nieces both had birthday parties to go to in Southend, so my sister and her husband couldn’t come round to Mum’s as well. (He was in Cardiff for the cup final anyway.)

So it was a much quieter visit than usual, especially as I had to go off and watch the FA cup final on the TV… what a good game though. Man Utd really deserved to win that game, which made it all the better when they got beaten on penalties.

Every time I go back out to Essex I feel totally lost as I hardly recognise any of it. There has been so much building in Wickford and Basildon in the last few years, and roads that I used to know and use have been blocked off and bypassed by 3-lane bypasses. There is a lot of high feeling here in Crawley about the amount of development, but it really is nothing compared to what is going on in Basildon and Wickford. I think you have to go there to see how well controlled the development in Crawley really is.