Leaving Blighty

The Sanity keepers

Chaos chaos bloody chaos. Like having a baby, I'm sure my mind over time will forget how utterly traumatising moving country can be. Not only do you have to throw away loads of your stuff (as keeping a toilet roll holder with elephants on that has sat in your loft for 3 years no longer seems necessary) but you have to literally start again...well, the starting again bit is still to come. I had a nervous breakdown one day, where crying into boxes seemed all I could do. The dog jumped on my lap and the cat jumped up too which only made me cry harder. Plus, I don't think they realise yet that we are sending them to Russia as well and yes, they will have to walk through 10ft snow drifts - not so cuddly now my little friends. Anyway, we also had to say goodbye to some great friends and family who have helped us keep our sanity - through Vodka mainly but that's another story.

Anyway, boxes packed, furniture removed to storage and then the packing of 5 enormous suitcases...one suitcase should have been sponsored by M&S as I did a typically British thing of packing food stuff that I might need such as pickled ginger - you just never know when this might come in handy - and the most important food item - leaves of gelatin...? We did weigh the suitcases at home but when we arrived to check in - 'ahhh sir, you are overweight on two of your cases - that will be £60 - or you can take stuff out' - undoing those suitcases was never an option - in fact, i'm suprised they stayed shut in the first place -

So, at 4.30am we had the taxi packed and we were off! Sigh of relief that we were actually on our way but stomach full of knots for what was to come. Having timed everything perfectly with the baby regarding naps and food, we were then told that we had a 4 hour delay for the flight. Instead of 8.55am we would be leaving at 1pm. Already our timing was screwed - little man was definitely not going to sleep on the plane. We were given tokens for food and so gorged ourselves on sandwiches we didn't want and then tried to find games to play with baby -

By the time we got onto the plane we were all slightly bemused and utterly knackered. Arthur only had two mini meltdowns on the plane and there was a child a few rows away that was screaming for most of the journey - this was quite good as attention was deflected to their beast instead of ours! I managed two G&T's and Arthur managed to eat a crayon without me realising but all in all it was fine.  First stage complete...Just.