G’Day from Sydney!

Well we made it. We are here. I didn’t die in the process, refuse to get on the plane, nor did I lose my mind – or even cry the entire way from Heathrow to Sydney .. only the London-Dubai leg!

As usual there was drama including seized goods on the docks in Sydney because of some mud on Holly’s shoes, and all our passports that I accidentally left in a hotel safe, but apart from that it all went well. Well enough that I haven’t been committed or had to take any Valium.

None of us slept on the plane. Well maybe Holly did, she was sitting in the row in front and as she’s nearing that age when your kids start pretending they don’t know you, we didn’t hear much from her on the plane. Being Holly she was on first name basis with the Emirates staff and had them on call for most of the journey, and on one of my trips to the toilet I found her in the business class lounge area (I know, it really does exist) making herself right at home …

So that left Luca and I sitting together. I was very emotional getting on the plane so once it took off I just felt weird. The sadness and anxiety in the year leading up to us leaving had built up to unhealthy levels and then all of a sudden it changed. I had left, the goodbyes had been said, I’d closed the book on London and I just felt numb.

Not that I could really dwell on that anyway as I had Mr Tenhundredandfiftybillionquestions sitting next to me firing them at me like bullets. Charlie does it too – but they are questions more like “What is that?”, “What does that do”, etc. Where as Luca’s questions are far more tricky and they require valid answers (he has a very sensitive bullshit-ometer).

Seven hours later we descended into Dubai where we were stopping for four nights and his questions reached fever pitch. Even though I’ve flown billions of times, I still get nervous when we fly in to land so I was trying to focus on not dying and Luca was doing his best to fuel the world’s biggest panic attack.

“What colour are the engines?”. “When do the wheels come down?”. “Why don’t fish blink?”, “Why are those little cans of lemonade so small?”. ….. etc. etc. etbloodycetera.

And then he stopped .. it was silent for a while until we were about 100m off the ground and I thought I was going to spew. But at least it was quiet.

Until Luca at the top of his voice asked “MUM, WHAT IS GOD’S SURNAME?”.

I mean, where does he get this stuff from?

So I said “he doesn’t have a surname?”.

“Everyone has a surname. What’s Gods?”

“Smith, Luca. It’s Smith.”

And with that he was satisfied, it should make for an interesting conversation with his Grandma when we get to Sydney.