Harry Potter World, A School Reunion and more!!

I really am a child at heart, one place I have wanted to visit for a long time is Harry Potter World, having read all the books, including the one recently published, and seen all the films. I finally booked to visit on Tuesday 30 August. I am grateful that my sister spent time with my mum, so that I could have this time out. 

I arrived at 9:30am, my tour was booked for 10am. After queuing for a little while, we entered the tour and saw a film explaining about the tour. We then made our way I to the Great Hall at Hogwarts.

We then had the opportunity to spend as much time as we needed to make our way around the tour. I took a lot of photos, so I have chosen a few to share with you. The first one being the Hogwarts Express.

I even had a go at trying to access platform 9 and 3/4's!!!

They certainly kept the best till last. As you complete the tour the last thing you see is Hogwarts School, it was awesome, and there was so much to see.

As you exit the tour, you go into the gift shop which I have to say I found extremely expensive, so needless to say I didn't buy anything!!!!

After the tour, I had time to meet up with another friend and spend some quality time together. I then travelled once again to mum's so I could help her through another week of renovations.

Mum attends the Home League, a Ladies meeting at Croydon Salvation Army on a Wednesday morning, so I took the opportunity to visit another couple of childhood haunts!!!

 The first one being Croham Hurst Woods, again this was another place I frequented regularly when I was a child. All the children from the street would spend a whole day in the woods more than once during the school holidays. We would each take a packed lunch and a drink, and make our way to the woods. We would be away all day and nobody seemed to worry, and there were mobile phones to ring home in those days!!!!!!!!!!

I them made my way to Beddington Park, once again a group of us from the road where I lived would travel on two buses and make our way to this park, then we would fish for Sticklebacks and Tadpoles, putting them in a jar of water and then carefully transporting the jars on the the buses as would take our catch home and then place them in our neighbours pond.

The above picture reminded me of all the happy times we spent in Beddington Park, it was good to see families making 'memories' on the day I visited.

I returned with mum to the park in the afternoon, and took her to the cafe, where we had spent many happy times together as a family on a Bank Holiday Monday as we spent time together in the park. Of course we needed to have an ice cream!!!!!

Once again on Thursday we made what would probably be our last visit to Hove for this year. It has been good to spend these special times with mum, during my Sabbatical, and I know that she has really enjoyed the outings, meals and ice creams we have shared together!!!

Saturday evening, I made my way to Pizza Express to meet up with some people that I hadn't seen for 42 years, they were friends from my senior school days at Heath Clark Grammar School in Croydon. We had an absolutely fantastic time reminiscing about the good and the bad times of our school days. We spent times laughing, enjoying each other's company. We also shared in some sad times as we heard about the difficulties many of us had faced in our lives during the years. We had journeyed from Redhill, Finnsbury Park, Croydon and Waltham Abbey. There were only five of us who managed to make it, but we can't wait until we have the opportunity to meet again, hopefully with some more of our school friends.

One thing I learnt through meeting together and sharing, was I thought I was the only one that had been bullied at school, but this was not the case, each one of us at some time or another, had suffered at the hands of bullies. It made me think that very often we do not know what others are going through, and that we each need to take time to listen to each other, to help each other and to learn from each other and sometimes we are not very good at doing that.

Below are two photos the first one is how we are now, the second one is from our schooldays, we think this was taken about 1973, I might add I am not in the second photo!!!

 I have to say my senior school days were not the happiest in my life, but I am grateful for the friends I did make at school, and the opportunity to meet up so many years later and still have plenty to talk about and share together.

I have learnt some lessons this week, one of them being that we each have our own lives to live and it is up to us how we live them, but what we do need to remember is that how we live our lives will have an impact on others, may we always be ready to live our lives so that others are blessed through what we do.

1.
As the varied way of life we journey,
Come the plains and then the mountainside,
Come the days of joy when birds are singing,
And the world is fair and sweet and wide;
Then a deeper joy comes, overfilling,
From the everlasting throne of love,
And all other joy is but an echo
From the ever-blessed heights above.

2.
There are shadows on the earthly pathway
Where, at times uncertainly, we tread;
In perplexity we halt and linger
Till our faith again is upward led.
For the heights of truth are ever calling,
And celestial radiance from afar
On our pilgrim way is gently falling
For our comfort where the shadows are.

3.
In the days of peace and golden sunshine,
In the days of joy. or days of woe,
There is confidence in him who holds us;
There is light to guide us here below.
And beyond await the heights of rapture
Where all earthly joys, transcended, fade
In the glory of the Saviour's presence,
In the home eternal he has made.