Is this enough cat food for six weeks?

Friday, May 31, 2019

Nelson, Nelson, New Zealand

Friday 31 May

Our lovely cat/house-sitter arrived on Thursday night and settled in, getting to know Spider, while we did our last packing.

Mum and Dad have left me plenty to eat.......

He was happy with her and judging by the photos we’ve seen since has very quickly transferred his affections to her – might not want to talk to us when we get home.

All who know Pete will understand how attached he is to his aussie hat, now in its fourth incarnation having bought him a gold-plated genuine Akubra in Sydney last year, and sadly we just couldn’t get it in the bags no matter how hard I tried, it was too firm and I’ve put in so much stuff for the family in Poland it just wouldn’t work. So it’s been left behind sulking on the hooks in the hall……..let’s see what we can find when we get to sunny Italy, maybe a nice Italian straw hat will do the trick? In the meantime he turned down the hats at Nelson airport, not tempted at all.

Our first hurdle was Thursday’s weather which had disrupted flights around the country, the aftermath hitting us on Friday with a 90-minute delay due to the flight to Nelson being delayed. We spoke to the check-in person who said ‘you’ll be okay’ but in the end we weren’t, we didn’t leave Nelson until midday, still had that fast walk to the international terminal, we did ask at Air NZ ticketing and the woman said ‘go through’, but of course we had immigration and x-rays to contend with, then Pete ran to the gate even though we’d heard our names being called……..yes, we were ‘those people’ who are being called and called and then there’s the ‘this is your final call, the offload process has begun’ – not that our bags would have even got near the international terminal from the Nelson plane.

And they left Dad's hat behind!!!!!

I walked to the gate, having seen the plane out on the tarmac so no chance it would come back.

We caught our breath then were escorted all through airside, immigration, customs, and back to the Air NZ ticketing counter where an extremely helpful young man called Julyan looked after us, offered water, and tried hard to find us alternative bookings before midnight, not 24 hours later. What a star! Then he said he’d locate our bags and could we describe them? Funny thing was I’d taken a photo of our bags when we checked in first thing (having lost a bag in Turkey a few years ago) so I was able to say well, here you are! So off he went to locate them, and left us sitting comfortably, having assured us we were on the Emirates flight at 8.30 and would arrive in Manchester only three hours later than our original flights. VERY happy with that. He also issued us with $20 meal vouchers each – we did try to wheedle a lounge pass but he said weather-related delays didn’t allow him to do that, sorry.

Checking in at Emirates was funny because the woman on the counter recognised Pete from the SQ gate, she’d changed from SQ uniform to Emirates in the meantime, and staff were looking out for us. Very kindly she blocked the centre seat so we had 17 hours with three seats for the two of us, lucky!

Japanese dinner from the food court was delicious, just what we needed. And we had a message from Karin with a photo showing that apparently Spider wasn't missing us at all, he was very happy on her knee having a nice neck-scratch. Out of sight, out of mind I guess.

And now the adventure begins.