happy hour, and an ecstatic 5 minutes as I relieve myself by taking the weight of my aching feet. Shrewsbury is the reverse of Hong Kong, in Shrewsbury there are about 500 pubs to every fish shop. Hong Kong on the other seems blessed with fish shops. I’ve walked almost non-stop since breakfast (11.30 am). After we organised our exit from Hong Kong (next Monday ferry to ShenZhen then flight to Xi’an) I’ve wandered with Gina through an amazing market of fresh (mostly still swimming or kicking) meat, fish, crabs, frogs and such like. We’ve all got on much better together today since we split up.

Last nights "round" in a bar was a scary £20. Here, as I’ve already mentioned its happy hour, and even without the happy hour its still a bit cheaper than my local in Shrewsbury. Chinese girls are beautiful, but then so are English girls, mmmm I think the "girl" bit is the common denominator (I am talking over 16 here before anyone starts calling social services).

Sunday morning swim

I avail myself of the hotel swimming pool. Months of training in England have lead up to this moment. I can now, confidently and gracefully, represent the spirit of English tourism abroad, hold my head up high and swim powerfully down the pool (by the way it’s a fallacy that Chinese swim between the surface and the bottom of the pool (a Chinese length), they swim just like us).

55 years on, and I "huai lai" (return) to my birthplace. The star ferry from the mainland (Kowloon) takes about 5 minutes to cross the harbour. We land on Hong Kong Island, and then a number 6X bus across the island to "Stanley" (I muse Stanley must have had a bike cos their seems to be an awful lot of places across the globe named after him). Another grumpy bus driver (2 out of 2) and we arrive at Stanley market. The day is hot but wet, under instructions from Leela, Gina and I refuse to buy an umbrella from the stall holder who wont haggle over the price (25 HK dollars). Instead we both get a soaking looking for another brolley vendor who we eventually beat down from 50 to 25 dollars!

The market is a typical trinkety tourist trap market. I wander through it to the edge and end up talking to a man in his house (he looks like the old guy in the karate kid film) about old buildings in Stanley. He mentions Stanley barracks (where my mother and father first lived) so I get the perfect excuse to tell him I was actually born here.

My mums present is ordered (a "stamp" ) and I’m just having a quick Tsingtaoe beer while the stall holder carves my mums name "Elsie" in English and Chinese characters into it. I haven’t seen the others for several hours. I’d better give the barman his pen back, get mums stamp and then find them.

From the market we decide to go off to Stanley barracks. The barman advises using a taxi, but we’re far too intrepid and chance it by bus. Leela finds the right stop but notes the sign saying that on a Sunday the bus (no. 14) doesn’t stop at it. I query this with a bus official who assures us its all OK, just wait here. The bus duly arrives and sails by with the driver giving us a cheery finger wave. I return to the bus official and recount the passing of the number 14 bus, he replies that the number 14 doesn’t stop here on a Sunday. This triggers another family Stress point, stretching the group dynamics to breaking point, and just a little beyond. We walk to the next bus stop, get the next bus, more spectacular views and a spectacular exhibition of high-speed country lane double decker bus driving and we get to Stanley barracks.

They must have known we were coming because there are 4 soldiers waiting for us, 1 with a rifle who never budged. Refreshingly they speak absolutely no English so I get to tell my birth story again, this time in "give us a clue" language. In the end I did manage to convince them that we weren’t the advanced guard of a British Para troop regiment coming to reclaim the Island, and they did OK it for us to take a few shots (photographs I mean) from outside the barracks, though in truth there was nothing to be seen really. I went back out the gate to fine the rest of the family surrounded by a huge swarm of huge dragonflies and 2 medium sized but nonetheless scary and hungry looking dogs. We took our photos and retreated back to the waiting bus.

Back in "Central" Hong Kong, the business section, we separated and got individually awe-struck by the fantastic high rise architecture that is the hallmark of Hong Kong. We were equally awe struck by the thousands upon thousand of Filipino maids picnicking on there one free day of a week, occupying every covered way and bit of shade in the centre of the city.