The Waiting Game Monday 27th May - Brisbane to Dubai

There are lots of ways of calculating how long a journey like this really takes, and there’s plenty of time en route to let those numbers twirl in all sorts of permutations and combinations.  Waiting is after all, one of the joys of travel.   On this journey we have a ratio of about one waiting hour for every two in the air.

I usually like to calculate P2P or “pillow to pillow” - the time it’s taken from rising from one bed to sinking thankfully into another in some far distant corner of the world.    I will do that tomorrow, but it feels like cheating this time because we have been travelling thus far somewhat further forward in the aeroplane than is our custom.

The result of that is that in this one fourteen hour flight sector alone, the writer has managed to achieve a total amount of sleep equal to or greater than the total of all the sleep amassed on previous flights this decade and is desperately trying to become accustomed to NOT having the feeling of having just emerged from a washing machine on a spin cycle.  

For the first time in memory, the other of us is not asleep while we sit for the five hours it’s going to take for our next flight to depart, and it’s decidedly odd having someone to talk to.

Of course we'll miss you all. Sunday 26th May - Dicky Beach to Brisbane

 

Today we might have gone for a walk along the beach if we hadn't been so busy  squeezing an ever-growing list of last minute tasks into our schedule before our nine PM pickup.

After a long absence from our travels, we are a little out of practice, and perhaps as a consequence a little older.  So we've packed as lightly as we can, tidied as well as necessary, and launched ourselves in the direction of the big smoke.

Perhaps by the time you are reading this we will be blissfully asleep on an aeroplane whisking us through the night.  

Most likely we will be eating snacks and watching one of as many movies one can condense into twenty one hours of flying time, having declined the airline's kind offer of WiFi (when available) perhaps with some vague notion that we can recapture some of the romance of travel in a bygone age when sleep was deemed unnecessary.

We are not completely anti-technology of course.  This post was written yesterday in a haze of procrastination, and scheduled for now in the hope that romance of travel in a bygone age doesn't involve some last minute misadventure!

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Once more into the breach. Saturday 25th May - Dicky Beach

My father never explained why, but used to often remind me that "a boy should always carry a piece of string, a shilling and a pocket knife", and so it is that for going on three quarters of a century I have always followed part of that advice.   

I followed the bit about the pocket knife at least.  I have a small one on my key ring which is undoubtedly doomed like its predecessors to meet its end in an airport security bin on that one day I forget it's there, and a second, checked-luggage multi tool with pliers and longer blade in a leather pouch goes where ever we do.  This second knife is I think, an attempt to make up for the absence of the shilling and the penny.   

That knife, when it is not travelling on a boat or in a checked-in bag, has a home in the door pocket of the van and although I had a vague Idea that I'd got it out to stick in the bag, it's whereabouts were not apparent.

It seems that these days, a journey across the planet begins with at least two trips to visit the van, to pat it's little slumbering nose, ready loaded so it can be ready to take off at a moment's notice on our eventual return,  to retrieve a couple of things we'd forgotten we might need.

That knife it turned out was hiding, not in the van, but on my desk under the mound of papers that life in this paperless age dictates are necessary to travel across borders.   

The van resumed it's slumber, and with just one sleep to go until we depart, one of us sat about thinking about what he might need do next, printing eTickets and gathering paper, while the other simply got on with it, as is her way.

The tiniest rush of relief.

 

Yes there are fingerprints all over the thing, but there are fingerprints all over us as well, and who cares, today we took a very big step.     

It's currently 31° (feels like 34 apparently) and 85% humidity - a bit more of both in the garage and it's a bit hard to handle anything, let alone juggle it into place without getting great smears of perspiration over the lot let alone a few little fingerprints.  But  I digress.

On the the day we picked up the fridge, which only came in one singularly inappropriate colour for a fridge, I determined that we'd try to match the design "language" for the rest of the fit out.  I think we've finally done it, or as close to it as we can!  We've made light plastic drawers look like heavy plastic ones!

Only the galley unit remains to be fitted, and the printer does seem to be enjoying the change of colour as it chugs away making the plumbing fixtures.  

Another day on the net.

Well one of us has had a great day.   She's finished her bit and the mobile boudoir is now complete with mosquito net for those time when we wish we had one. 

Just like pretty much everything else, we'd planned it in detail, made allowance for it to go exactly where it does, and were surprised when it did exactly what it was supposed to do without fuss or bother.  

I guess that's because on the other side of the garage, no amount of planning and allowance could have made up for today's misadventures.   So we're back to being a day behind for every day we work, but thankfully we have a deadline, so I suspect by midnight Sunday, we'll be where we need to be, perhaps with a list of things that still need doing!

Meanwhile, back in the soft-furnishings department...

 

While one of us has been errr…"pacing himself", which is code for "catching up on other projects" while waiting variously for paint to dry, sealant to cure and things to print, the other has been bringing the stuff that most don't think about to a glorious conclusion.

The blackout curtain for the back window is complete with all it's magnets sewn in and if it wasn't so black, what a picture it would make. So would the trials of sewing very strong little magnets into little pockets while simultaneously trying to stop them leaping onto parts of the sewing machine, but no pictures were allowed that day.

The mosquito net is the last bit of insurance we think, and like everything else we've done it's a bit of a fiddle to get it just "so".  If we have a net, even a good looking one,  we will presumably never need it, and sometime tomorrow, we'll have one, quite possibly about the same time that the drawers return to their rightful positions.   

On Monday, we're probably off for a few days!

Sliding (van) doors.

 

Having had a few days off van building to be up to our armpits in little children and some slightly larger ones, it's nice to be home with a clear head and a clear list of things left to be done, as well as one thing crossed off the somewhat longer term list.   

The downstairs bathroom is now complete and in a way it's because of the work on the van.  We we were struggling even before the madness of Covid hit, to find someone to make our wallpaper at a price and in a time frame that was even barely reasonable.   We gave up in the end and decided that task would made a nice perpetual heading for our whiteboard list in the shed.

A week or two ago, before the morning mist had time to clear (if indeed there had been any morning mist, which there never is round here) I was picking up a few nuts and bolts and a roll of tape at our very large hardware store, when another van caught my eye, this one with very subtle graphics proclaiming the driver to be just the person for the job.   I phoned the company, sent them my  image and with no fuss or bother, they waved a magic wand and our downstairs bathroom was complete.

We we speaking to our grandchildren of many things over the weekend.  Of places we'd lived and things we'd done and projects we'd actually completed, and we both became quite tired thinking about them.

So tired were we, that an embargo has been brought down on large projects from this day forth.

I don't think that includes documenting the old ones though!