It’s my last run in London. I go hard because I’m going home today! That’s what I call last chance training.
Back at Hotel Mills, there’s more suitcase squeezing before we set off for a spot of window shopping at the new Westfield shopping centre and for a quick squizz at the Olympic Village. We’re not planning to purchase anything at the shops, unless it’s sufficiently small and light enough to fit into our hand luggage! However, we both have love-at-first-sight retail experiences; David with a pair of jeans and me with a handbag, and we can’t resist either. Looks like those cases are going to be a bit fuller and fatter than they were before!
We pop back for the cases, a cuppa and to psyche ourselves up for the long journey home. I always think that it’s just as well Australia is so far away, because it’s so fabulous, if it was nearer, every Tom, Dick and Harry would be popping on over. However, there’s no getting away from it, the journey is long and uncomfortable, whichever way you look at it!
The tube ride is pretty uneventful and pretty painless as tube journeys go. Miraculously the cases are within their weight limits and we breathe a big sigh of relief. When I’m back in the mother country, I am always on such an uncontrollable shopping spree for the entire holiday, and am then gripped by excess baggage nightmares at the end! Anyway, all is going great until we get to security where the lady guard tips out all of David’s meticulously packed bag. Then there’s 20 dumb-ass questions about my chill-pill-pack, it’s like the Heathrow Inquisition! There’s nothing interesting enough for security lady so she allows us to proceed on our merry way. After much huffing and puffing and repacking, we have a quick splurge in duty free and a little drink and dinner in the pub before it’s boarding time!
In the old days before these enormous A 380s me and David always used to covet the row of 2 seats at the back of the plane so we could spread out, but only on each other. In the modern age of the outsize A380 there’s no row of 2’s and we’re left with a bit of a plane dilemma. David only likes to sit by the window, and I only like to sit in the aisle, and neither of us want to budge. On this trip, we’ve decided that David will sit by the window and I’ll sit in the aisle of the same row and we’ll hedge our bets on the stranger who will be piggy in the middle. There’s high fives all round then, when we realise the plane isn’t full and we have the whole row to ourselves ! What a result! Our gamble paid off! This means that after the usual dodgy plane food, we both have enough space to get some quality zzzzs.
Twelve hours later, we hit Singapore, have about an hour to kill on the travelator, before we’re back through security and reboarding! We can’t believe our good luck when the middle seat is once again free and we spread out into the space.I’m catching up on more movies inbetween catching up on lost sleep, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Hugo and am pretty stoked as I missed them both first time round at the cinema.
We’re quite the time travellers having passed through a whole load of time zones already, but the important thing is, we’re on the last leg… and homeward bound!
