The flying is the easy part - just try the training

Thursday 21^st November to Friday 29^th November 2013

Having made the trip numerous times and with both of us doing a fair amount of travel this year, the staff at Emirates check in Birmingham provided a breath of fresh air – so simple to go through the whole process – less than 5 minutes in total – and all done with a smile and friendliness that we had seen lacking with our October trip.

Landing in Dubai and clearing through to the transit area – which is really the whole terminal, I had a chance to have a shower and refresh and then off for a coffee, I managed to glimpse some of the action in the first test – having seen the first day score of Australia 8/273 it was very satisfying to find that England were 7/91.

Not long after we were off on the second leg of 13 hours albeit with a delay of 90 minutes.

Arrived in Brisbane – no not to see the cricket – off into the city to sort out a sim card for the phone and other things, and then to take the train up to see Diane’s parents.

What should have been a 90 minute trip turned into a 4 ½ hour exercise in frustration.

The initial delay was cause by an unfortunate fatality – no details known, but sad situation whatever the reasons. What followed was out of some comedy.

The driver informed us of the situation and that the train would be terminating; then it wasn’t and we moved to the next station where it would; then it wasn’t – next station and it did – we were all off and had to wait for buses – after a 45 minute delay, one of the other passengers rang to find that no-one even knew we were there; then another half hour and buses were coming – three duly arrived, but full of passengers from other stations – no room at the inn.

Then we were back on the train to the end of the line for that train – I still had a bit of a way to go – but as well as many others the story given to us was that we had a 60 minute wait for another train (from platform 1) – 5 minutes before it was due the platform was changed to number 2 and along with a number of others with luggage following international flights we had to negotiate the railway bridge.

Special thanks to Queensland Rail for their “kind” (of) consideration for their paying customers – if I don’t need to use their services again then I certainly won’t be doing so.

Dot and Terry were both there to meet me and bundled me back to the new house – smaller than the last one but still very nice – at their age they needed something more manageable.

Like any newer house there are things that need changing and after 3 days the garden is essentially finished and looking pretty good – the muscles and bones of this poor old fellow have been well exercised.

Just be careful - the wand is in her right hand behind her back
and she can quickly turn you into a newt

Forgot to say that luggage wise, I was spot on the 30kg limit; the carry on was a little over and yet I seem to have little clothing available to me – a single pair of boots; a spare pair of jeans; a pair of shorts as well as a few shirts and smalls.

Why so little you may ask? There was an extraordinary amount of things that needed to come back to Melbourne and had to go now – I didn’t get much of say about it – Sam would need her stuff in January and Diane had things that needed to go.

So it is day-to-day wear for a little while.

There are times when you think it is safe to go back into the water – I thought that I had finished the work listed out for me for a while, but I had forgotten the power of the mother-in-law – I had a list awaiting for me – aaarrrrggghhh!

The back garden is a bit smaller than the previous one, but
needed a bit of work to bring it up to scratch...

...and a bit more work to bring it up to mother-in-law satisfaction.
But job done and both are pleased with the outcome

But now as the week draws to a close this list has been done; and I have had a very good week with the favourite in-laws.

They have joined the rest of the world – we have passed on Diane’s laptop for them to use and they have been connected to the world-wide web, so emailing and google searches have rapidly become part of their language now.

They are doing very well and being in their late 70’s you indeed have to admire their desire to learn something new and so foreign – Good on ‘em.

So it will soon be off to Melbourne to see Mitch and to at last meet Sara

Cruising – Nil

Flying – 20,000 km (approx)