Comments and comfort

So I'm not alone.... lovely amusing and encouraging comments from people who sound rather like me! I'm pretty much ready now, although I did have to go to a large Tesco about 5 miles away this morning for black printer ink before I could print out our boarding passes - there didn't seem to be an option, which I usually go for in such circumstances, to just print them out in colour, say bright pink or poison green.

I have my ipod charged, elizabethm, loaded with old favourite audiobooks - 'Persuasion' is just the thing to listen to in the night if you can't sleep - but I'm intrigued now as to how you can use it as a spirit level. I can barely work mine as a basic ipod....

Rose is away, but will ring tonight, and I can tell her cheerfully that we're all sorted, and it will be true.

You think I'm making a lot of fuss, bother and melodrama for a 4-day jaunt? Remember my trip to Australia? This is nothing. It's really the animals who create all the work involved in going away, not the travel itself. The dog (a miniature Yorkshire Terrier, Susan, inherited from my mother) will have her bath after her last muddy walk of the day; she can't go into foster care smelling as she does. The cats have been treated to rather posh sachets of whatever horrible slurry passes as cat food, to be used if and when desperate by Lesley, who is sleeping here while I'm away. Lesley hasn't yet faced the morning cacophony of "Yow! Yow! Breakfast NOW!" from cats who like to present themselves as starving, despite their bowl of expensive biscuits being always available. She will witness the incredible high-speed hoovering technique favoured by Scooter, whose food disappears in a trice, while Lottie and Millie are still sniffing disdainfully at theirs.

The weather forecast for our destination seems fairly reasonable, cloudy with showers - well, we can cope with that, we're British. And in warm vests. Galoshes, no - Lizzie, have you seen galoshes? Hideous!!

Adieu, adieu, I'll be back on Thursday, all going well with the passport issue, of course. I'll have lots of photos and opinions, and look forward to your opinions in response. Or I might be back at my desk tomorrow morning to fulminate about airport security telling me one thing and doing another. No news is good news.