Home Sweet Home

The flight home to Melbourne was a long one. Just on 14 hours. I hit the jackpot as far as seating allocations go - I ended up being one of the few people in economy class who had a spare seat next to them. About 40 minutes in to the trip I was asked if I would be willing to give up my two seats to allow a mother travelling with her young child to take my seats and in return I could have her aisle bulkhead seat in the first row after business class. In my book bulkhead seat trumps two seats in normal row so I was happy to trade in the extra side room for extra leg room. The cabin staff were grateful for my generosity, the other people they had tried would not give up their seats, and took pains to ensure I was happy throughout the rest of the flight. Other than that the flight was uneventful but interminable. I watched a couple of movies, worked on some Sudoku puzzles, slept fitfully but mostly read 'Jumper' by Steven Gould. A Movie based on the book is showing in cinemas at the moment, we had seen posters for the Movie right throughout Europe, so I was interested in reading the book and had picked it up at Waterstones in London. It was a good read, showed its age through repeated references to Pan Am Airlines (first published in 1992), had an interesting but not particularly complex plot and made a perfect diversion for a 14 hour plane journey. We touched down in Melbourne at 7:15am about 30-40 minutes late. We had left Dubai pretty much on time so I guess we had some string headwinds to contend wih on our journey East. My location just aft of Business Class enabled me to be the first of the economy passengers out of the aircraft. I was quickly though customs although did get stopped for a quick quiz by a Custom's Officer once I was through the first passport control - Belle attributes this to my funny hat! After customs I ignored the duty free goods and went to collect my luggage. I had a bit of a wait before it appeared and I had to keep reminding myself that I was looking for a red bag as Belle and I Had swiched bags for the trip home as the blue suitcase i had been using was larger and therefore better able to cope with the 30kg of stuff that we crammed in to it. After that it was through quarrantine where they x-rayed my bag and then sent me on my way. Belle met me outside, we brakfasted and the headed home. After a short rest and a much needed shower we headed out and managed to replace or set in train the replacement of, most of the cards that were pinched from my person in Spain.

Can you spot the tiny human?

I promised a big revelation in the last blog and here it comes. Belle and I have been concealing from the majority of you that in early August we are expecting the arrival of our firstborn. Belle will be 17 weeks pregnant on Monday and so far evrtything has been proceeding as expected. I have included a fuzzy grey image in which, if you screw your eyes up enough, you can just make out a tiny human form.

Fur hat home and exhausted