By Tim Dinsdale

Hi – my name is Tim and I live in Wellington, but for the last two years I have lived in London with Mum and Dad. We went on our OE which was great fun.

I loved living in London even though it is big and very busy with lots and lots of people. We lived right in the middle of London in Bloomsbury which is not far from the British Museum and the British Library which we visited on a number of occasions. I particularly liked the Roman and Egyptian sections of the Museum and the beautifully coloured medieval manuscripts at the Library.

I do Seido Karate and horse riding here in Wellington so when we were away in London I joined the Fulham Seido Karate Club which was hard work but great fun. To get to karate we had to travel on the tube at 6 p.m. when people were leaving work to go home and I always asked Dad if the tube would be like sardines, with everybody packed together as I didn’t really like it when it was like sardines. Mostly it was but very often people stood up to give me their seat which was kind of them.

On the way back from karate it was later in the evening with less people and I always got a seat then. I liked saying hello to people or smiling at the person opposite which you don’t really do in London. I met lots of nice people that way. One night I sat next to a man who was reading music and we got talking. He turned out to be an opera singer who was practicing for an opera to be performed in front of the Queen for her Jubilee Celebrations. My Dad told him that I didn’t know you don’t really talk to people on the tube and the man laughed and said there should be more people like me as it had made his day and made the journey home much more fun. I was also able to join Special Olympics Equestrian at St Albans which is just out of London and we travelled there for my group lessons on Friday nights which I also enjoyed as I love riding.

My sister Samantha lives in London and I loved spending time with her most weekends when she had her days off work. We went to some great concerts like Michael Jackson (not the real person but someone who sang like him) and Les Miserables both of which I loved. And with Mum and Dad we all went to the Tower of London where we saw the dungeons and the Beefeaters, visited The Monument where the Great Fire of London started in 1666 and saw Buckingham Palace where the Queen lives.

Mum, Dad and I did lots of travelling while we were away. We drove all around England, Scotland, Wales and Southern Ireland, visiting old castles and little villages. My relations came from England and Scotland a long time ago and we visited lots of villages and towns where they used to live. I particularly liked walking through the graveyards looking at the grave stones trying to find our ancestors and we did find the names of quite a few. I also love anything to do with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table so we drove to many places where he had been, including Tintagel on the coast of Cornwall where he was supposed to have been born, Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset where he and Queen Guinevere are buried and even to Winchester in Hampshire where the Round Table is up on the wall of Winchester Abbey – all the trips were really enjoyable and I have learnt a lot more about King Arthur.

We also had some great trips to Europe and beyond. We went to Austria (in the snow), Morocco (very hot, and I was really worried about all the very poor people in the streets so decided that I would like to be the King of Morocco and make sure everyone was fed and had somewhere to live). I enjoyed Spain (lovely old buildings and delicious food). One day when we were having lunch in an outdoor café in Granada, Southern Spain, a young man with Down Syndrome saw us and came over to say hello (“hola” in Spanish) and to give me a hug. I can’t speak Spanish and he couldn’t speak English but we had a conversation and lots of smiles then he said goodbye “adios”, waving as he went. I thought that was really nice of him to stop and say hello. We also visited Barbados (where my grandfather and great-grandfather lived many years ago) and Corfu (very warm and sunny with lovely moussaka which I ate many times at a little café just near where we were staying.

The family who owned it was really nice and gave me a big helping of Auntie’s moussaka each time we visited). Probably my favourite trips were to Dubrovnik in Croatia which is very beautiful, Normandy in France where I saw the Bayeux Tapestry which is 1,000 years old and to Arromanches which is the site of the D-Day Landings of the troops during World War 2. And before that, we went on a wonderful cruise on a ship through to St Petersburg in Russia visiting Stockholm in Sweden, Tallinn in Estonia and other cities. I love the places we visited but I also loved the cruise as there was a wonderful big library on board and when we weren’t out visiting places I sat in the Library and read books. Then at night after dinner there were quizzes and musicals and cooking demonstrations – all of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Now we are back home I often talk about our time away. I met lots of lovely people and learnt a great deal of interesting things about the different countries we visited. Luckily Mum has made me photobooks which I look at often and remember all the fabulous things we did during our big OE.