Leaving the UK

I had hoped to be all sorted & packed but as usual that didn't happen - after the week camping in muddy sandy woods at the Welsh face & body painting festival, and stopping in Diss to paint for a day on the way back, I spent 2 days just unpacking & washing! Then had another gig for the Mind, Body and spirit fair lady - much more relaxing this time as she had the sweet Eastern European guy doing 'gong healing' on stage rather than a drum workshop like last time. Anyway, started packing a bit on Sunday between vaguely getting ready for a big family tea. Luckily Sarah and Caroline both brought yummy stuff with them and Mich added one of her choc cakes so aside from shopping and Pete doing some veggies, there was not too much cooking to do. Lovely to see everyone - wee cousin Tom had suddenly shot up! Fin did most of the entertaining, between naps and streaking the croquet field. One of the less highlighted events was him depositing a 'small brown fish' as the film says, in his paddling pool....

Monday 17th Aug was last chance to pack....I had it about sorted (well, what we would take with us anyway) but hadn't had time to empty our room and also was finishing emptying the barn I'd been sorting out stored things in. Pete cleaned and emptied the 'new' car as we hope to sell it - I really don't like driving it and the neck rests are designed to be uncomfortable, real pain to sit with. Filey 'helped' and as well as getting very muddy and filling his clothes with stones again, got totally overexcited by it all and had to tell me all about it after an early morning bath. He got another bath 'helping' Brian clean the muddy tent he'd been using the week before at some national boat races - kept getting us too then decided to drink from the hose. Sue arrived with Ali and a set of scales at which point we realised the airline we were using this time had about 1/2 the luggage allowance we had been used to as well as charging by the kilo for over-luggage, unlike BA which had a set 80UK per extra suitcase (which worked out far cheaper than shipping stuff). Panic as we were double the allowance. A lot of experimenting revealed that most of Finleys miserly weight (no 'same as adult' like when we went to NZ) went on his folding cot so that was abandoned. Then Pete found our fairly light suitcases each took 1/3 of our weight up so we had to switch to old soft wheel-less bags - pain to carry but 2/3 lighter! I got fed up at that point as I'd packed light anyway - all the stuff was things I had to have really as otherwise I'd be paying to ship paints I already HAD out to HK (where I couldn't get them) - I needed to take more than usual as I have 10 bodies to paint at the upcoming Shanghai festival. And as for non-painty things, I know I can't get shoes/ clothes in my size in Hk at all. Pete was the opposite and refused to pack more than a few shorts & 3 tshirts which means I will have to shop for him as soon as we arrive.

Anyway it all got packed into bulging bags and far more carry-on than I wanted to have, and we arrived at Heathrow on Tues am. All made it on the plane except Petes windsurfing kit! Security was annoying - of all the previous 11 flights we did with Fin, they were not bothered by his medicines, milk, food etc at all. This time they wanted me to drink his sterilising solution (um, NO its basically disinfectant) and made me open all the special food jars we had bought for him and taste them, even the sealed-in-plastic ones. (Total waste as it turns out the room we got in HK had no fridge and they all fermented the first day. Not that they would have lasted much longer, opened, in a fridge. Grrr.) Fin was pretty good although he only fell asleep once the whole trip and woke up when we tried to put him in the baby cot thing as Petes leg went dead. So we were tired