Hey, today's the day!

Oh no.  Packing and leaving day.

The day has arrived when it is time to close the lid on the case – with some difficulty. Time to do the last minute mental check list, walking around from room to room and finding essentials which have not made it to the case.

I always consider the first pack of the case the most difficult.  Have I remembered to put everything in that I might need?  How many of these things do really I need?  And what about the bunch that fall under the heading of ‘just in case’?

The case and bags are hauled to the bottom of the stairs and right at the last minute the so-called formal clothes are found on a hanger on the wardrobe door.  They are bundled unceremoniously into an outside pocket of the case,  Uber-M picks up the case and totes it down the steps to the car park. 

 

I hurry back upstairs; I can’t find my passport in the capacious black bag.  Uber-M appears at the front door, she tells me the passport is in my bag and I had been looking in the wrong place. In fact, if the passport had been a snake it would have bitten me. Full-on panic and stress mode settles to a mild undercurrent of unease as we drive off into the afternoon sun, through the Domain Tunnel, out into the sunshine again, the city peeling away behind us and in an unbelievably short time the airport buildings loom ahead.

Uber-M piles the luggage on the footpath, speeds away to avoid the afternoon peak hour bedlam and within minutes I have completed the check in and sit munching on the remains of lunch in the international departure terminal.

Quite civilized and modern it is; plenty of seating, television screens with mind-numbing, inane programs, brightly lit retail areas which beckon the traveller with the lure of bling, booze, beauty products and basics.  Basics such as the electrical appliance adaptor for Japan, without which the android tablet, snug in its black and white cover and tucked into the back of the blue and red day pack, may just as well have been left at home.

The interminable walk to the departure lounge, the call up process for boarding, picking up the Straits Times as a change from the local papers and after stowing the carry-on baggage in the overhead locker, wriggling into a window seat.

The plane taxis out onto the runway, pauses and with a tremendous surge of power it is airborne. 

There is no turning back now.