July and August were a welcome break from the hectic travel schedule in May and June (UK, Thailand, Russia) with just a half day visit to Shenzhen. The early part of September saw a brief rebound with two days in Macao and three in Beijing.

The first half of July was dominated by TV viewing of the World Cup. England progressed (at last!) beyond the group stages and reached the semi- finals, winning their first penalty shootout in decades in the process. Manager Gareth Southgate deserves much of the credit for this, though one wonders at his obsession with selecting Raheem Sterling in preference to the more dangerous Marcus Rashford. The latter has further demonstrated his goal-scoring skills in recent internationals. At club level, Jose Mourinho seems to be wearing similar blinkers.

Tiffany has been back from college for the whole summer, and Alex has been off school, so we have been able to spend some quality family time together.

On the work front, I managed to secure an exciting new consultancy appointment, which should help keep the company going! Fanny has been extremely busy coping with clients affected by two public consultation exercises by the government which seem to overlap to the extent of partly contradicting each other. One says we need more sporting facilities, and existing ones should pay more rent; the other says we should maybe grab all the land for housing instead. You couldn’t make it up…

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