Go

We get up early-ish to start on the end. I hesitantly check my tiles for efflorescence (of which, I am pleased to say, there is none - yet). Hannah’s parents arrive early to help out in any way they can. Alison takes the children out of harm’s way. Hannah and Robert pack all the stuff which drips off every surface in the formerly orange room into a series of armoured stuff sacks. So many questions: will we be able to buy (delete as applicable) tampons, nappies, books, pasta, any food the kids will actually eat?
Martin the builder comes round for the final hand over and we shuffle through mostly built rooms pointing out hairline cracks and doors that don’t quite meet in the middle.

There is that menace in the air. The menace of an immutable deadline hanging at the end of the day. Exciting but unyielding.  We get a look at the final luggage in total. It is quite scary. I make paltry attempts to weight it using our bathroom scales by holding each bag in turn, but this only goes to prove how I need to lose weight and not the luggage. For reference the luggage tally looks a little like this:

• Maclaren stroller buggy thing
• Two car seats
• Four mini ruck sacks (hand luggage)
• Two big travel rucksacks
• An appropriately named holdall (weighing a glorious 29kg)
• Scary blue bag (containing travel tent cot things)
• Five pack of Chewitts (my contribution to the packing effort)

Alison and Robert have also kindly agreed to drive us down to Gatwick. Somewhat later than our scheduled time, we pile into the combined might of a Renault Scenic and a Citroen Xsara Picasso which whisk us away from the academia of Cambridge and into the more gritty reality of Gatwick North Terminal. After the usual gut wrenching pain of Short Stay car park costs, we are at the Emirates check in desk. The lady eyes our assembled luggage with suspicion.

“Have you packed all this yourself” she asks in her usual how-to-catch-a-terrorist-with-alarmingly-simple-questions voice. I lie and say yes. She adds up all the luggage weights and writes them down on a bit of paper. She has that look on her that is reminiscent of the time you just popped into Kwik Fit for a new tire and ended up spending £500 on new brakes.

The sum total of our expeditionary force is 96kg. Under one of your normal poxy airlines, this would be problematic with a paltry 20kg for humans and a toothbrush for Isla. But no, Emirates, the sheiks of the air, come through with a cracking 30kg per person luggage allowance, and so we laugh mockingly at the check in lady and her tutting and oohing. Our luggage is deemed too squashy and unusual to be put on normal check in belts, and we force it down the outsize belt with other people’s guitars and golf clubs.
Robert and Alison, who have been worth their weight in gold, disappear off and it all starts to get a little more real.

Gatwick is eerily quiet and we feast on possibly the last piece of beef I will see for many months before drifting through X-ray machines and ladies assaulting you with perfume testers. I have developed a strange habit of always spraying Duty Free aftershave onto my wrists in departure lounges. Beth tells me I smell like a girl.

And then it’s that good bit where you jump all the queues and get to go on the plane first. At least you think it’s good until your children rebel and starting attacking the seats in front of them because they are bored, bored, bored and they have been on this plane ‘for ever’. But there are clever individual TVs that play children’s films and Beth settles down to watch Angelina Ballerina. Occasionally she leans forward to pause the movie (untrained) whilst adjusting her viewing angle. Isla quickly locates the stewardess button and presses it repeatedly.

And then we are off. Up in the air. Hannah looks knackered. We have made the foolish mistake, often made by people at their weddings, in assuming that the departure was the end of something, something to be achieved, when clearly it was only the beginning of something. Something much larger. I do not partake of inflight alcohol. This is a rare thing.