We first booked the removal container and Pickfords to come in and pack up the house. Ours was a 3 day move plan, they would come in on Tuesday 1st May and Wed 2nd May to pack up, the container was then due to arrive on the Thursday to take it all away. This meant we had nowhere to sleep on the Thursday night so we booked a hotel at Heathrow. Nice and easy we thought.
We then booked the flights for the 4th May (we chose Singapore Airlines as they had more stuff on the plane for the girls to do) only to be told the earlier flight that day was fully booked and we had to book the 10:15 PM flight. Long day Friday we thought. Oh well not to worry. We then had to drain our waterbed on the Tuesday as it would take a long time to drain, dismantle and pack. So we slept in the spare bed for the 2 nights and didn't get too much sleep...However Thursday morning our Visa's were finally through and I quickly printed them all off.
Tue and Wed the Pickfords guys did a brilliant job of packing up the house, on the Thursday the container arrived early, we had to pick up the hire car at 12 and so we left the guys to load the container. On collecting the car we were told it had broken down on the way and they only had a Saloon car when we needed an estate as we had 4 large suitcases. After a little chat Hertz finally agreed to let me have a VW Sharan. Quite lucky really as I don't think the cases would have got into an estate anyway. When we got back the container had been loaded and had gone. We were well happy, we then spent a couple of hours clearing and tipping a load of stuff when we suddenly realised the bags we were going to use for hand luggage on the plane had been packed up and put in the container!!!
We had no time to get any more so we put the hand luggage in carrier bags. Went off to Heathrow poping in to Kerry's mum and the my Dad on the way and got to the Hotel all very tired. The Hotel managed to put us in joining rooms (which was nice) and we all settled down for the night. at 4 am we were all woken by a fire alarm, which we later found out was someone breaking the break glass. 3 nights now without any proper sleep.
In the morning we had to have the hire car back early and as we were all up anyway, we packed up the car and I dropped the Kerry and the girls with all the cases, carrier bags, food which we had taken and the car seats (which we needed once we got to Melbourne) at 9.10 am and I delivered the car back safely in the knowledge that we could check in 24 hours early and get rid of the cases etc and the we could relax...wrong... We could check the cases in at 5.30 pm at the ealiest. Oh well a long day at Heathrow. Anyway we got a couple of bags for hand luggage and transfered all the changes of clothes etc to the bags and then tried to amuse the girls for 8 hours.
5.30 finally arrived. We went to check in and the belt broke down at check in. We were also asked if we were emigrating as the cases were overweight and if we were we would be fine. Of course we were we told her and showed her the printed e-mails confirming the visa's. She really wasn't sure and called her boss. An hour later we were moved to another check in person who seemed to be a lot more knowledgable shall we say and swiped our passports and hey presto the confirmation of the emigration visa's were there.
As we were waiting in the departure lounge Kerry went off and two men and an old lady sat down next to us, they were of middle eastern origin. Kayla felt a bit scared and came over for a cuddle, Kerry came back and the girls wanted to go off with her while I looked after the bags. All of a sudden one of the men offered me something to eat, I wasn't sure at first what it was but I was a bit nervous so I politely refused. I suddenly realised he wasn't taking no for an answer. So I politely took a piece of pineapple as it turned out. Then the old lady thrust something under my nose also, again I wasn't allowed to refuse, this turned out to be a baby raw carrot. Then before I had finished the carrot more pineapple was thrust at me.
Luckily Kerry and the girls came back and Kerry had bought me some steak crisps ha ha I offered them a crisp, one of the men tried one and we spoke for a while in very bad english (and that was just me). They came for Dubai and were fascinated by Laurens' fair skin.
They then left making me feel more at ease as I really didn't want any more pineapple or carrots.
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