Bienvenidos!

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Back in Blighty

I'm back!

Currently sat at home eating one of the coveted Cinnabons that somehow made it back unscathed from Panama and survived the 24-hour trip back home. Surprisingly, they've not gone stale yet... I spent the last two and a half days moving all our stuff into the new house, and I think I finally managed to catch the cold everyone was telling me I'd get over there (but somehow avoided).

The trip was more than a little tiring. I woke up before my alarm on the Sunday and couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up at about seven, showered, breakfasted, dressed, then nipped over to the super-99 to pick up a couple of boxes of the biscuits they stopped selling over here. Then it was goodbyes and hugs and promises to return (one day) and we headed out in the car to the airport. My bag was only 5lbs under the weight limit, which wasn't so much the fault of shoes and books this time as it was the three bottles of rum I had in there. His family came to say a last goodbye, I kissed Mario whilst waiting to go through passport control and that was it - I left Panama. There was one moment I thought I wasn't going to though - I got stuck in a loo cubicle because I couldn't unlock it - I ended up having to lever the whole door off the catch. On the plane I did my good turn for the day by lending the lady next to me a spoon so she could eat her tamal, and in return she shared her chicheme with me. I managed not to get lost in Miami, called Mario, then found my gate. On that flight I was sat next to a Chilean guy in an aisle seat right in front of the bathrooms, whish was fantastic for me. We chatted about 3 hours in spanglish before we both fell asleep. Then it was the 7-hour wait in Madrid. It was made a bit shorter by the transit through customs and having to get to the satellite terminal which was about 20 minutes away from the main bit, and then I spent about an hour chasing down my boarding card. I called Mario again, rang Mum twice, had something to eat and tried not to fall asleep. In the end I went to the coffee shop by my gate, curled up on one of the armchairs and read my Louis de Bernieres book for about an hour. The flight to London didn't take too long and soon I was on home soil, only to find out that they'd misplaced my baggage. I waited by the carousel from before the cases started coming through until after the last case had gone, and mine wasn't there. To make things worse, I couldn't get through to Mum on her phone, so I filled in my lost baggage form and headed out the door.

I couldn't see anyone at first and then Emma came bounding up, followed by Mum and Kate, and I couldn't hold it in much longer and burst into tears. It all came out right in the end though - they delivered my bag, slightly worse for wear but with everything still in it, yesterday morning.

Tuesday I got up at half six so we could go and get Mario from Manchester Airport and move into our new house. We were a bit late leaving and ran into traffic so we turned up almost two hours late, only to find out the plane hadn't even landed yet because of delays in New York. He finally came through at about half ten and we set off for Liverpool. We had a bit of trouble finding the van rental place, got there at about half eleven and made it to the house pretty unscathed. Kev was there so we stayed about 45 minutes before going to pick up the first load. The proters weern't in though, so we had to park the van outside the gates and carry every box out and down to the road. It was hard work and wed didn't finish loading up until about half three. Unloading took a lot less time, thankfully. We had lunch and then went back twice more until all the boxes were piled up in the living room and there was no space to move. We decided to just unpack the bedding that night and save the rest for the next day. Mum treated us all (us being Mario, me, Kev and Rooban - Tanya was away in Hull) to dinner and then we went straight to bed. Mario did his usual trick of stealing most of the pillows and throwing them around, and I managed to get my foot stuck through the bars at the bottom of the bed, but apart from that it was pretty good. No more springs digging in or touching the base when you sit on the mattress because it's so flat.

The next day we moved the furniture around and swapped a few bits over, and the room looked a lot bigger and lighter for it. Then started the arduous task of unpacking and finding a place for everything... It's not easy trying to fit two people's stuff into a one person space, especially when they've accumulated as much crap as Mario and I have. We managed to get most of our books on the shelves, and the wardrobe still has some space, but I haven't brought the clothes from my suitcase yet... We still hadn't finished by that evening and I was starting to feel a bit under the weather, so we decided to stay one more night. I'm glad we did - we got all of the boxes out of the living room and made it look more like a house and less like a rubbish tip. There's still some stuff to be sorted but I left that with Mario and told him to just leave the stuff he didn't know what to do with. I have a feeling that it will all still be there when I get back.

Anyway. I need to go to bed now because I'm at work in the morning. Laters all xxx

10:09 p.m. - 2006-08-03

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