Thursday, 25 October 2012
Getting a good night's sleep before a major excursion isn't as easy as you might think, and I was awake, if the old memory serves me well at one-thirty and three before I emerged from a dream involving High School acquaintances, degenerate cricketers and an Elvis Costello concert around five-thirty.
At least I slept better than Madam, who ascribed inability to get a good night's sleep to a combination of factors you can probably figure out without being told. Given the number of things that could go wrong over the next three weeks you’ll be running over the possibilities, and that sort of thing isn't exactly conducive to deep and undisturbed slumber.
In any case, once I was awake I was back on the travelogue and had the prelude largely knocked over before the pre-breakfast shower. There had been some consideration of a walk to find a breakfast option away from the hotel but intermittent drizzle put paid to that theory and we headed downstairs for a Spanish omelette (Hughesy) and a bowl of fruit (Madam) before we completed the packing and the regulation reshuffle of bits and pieces.
The Ukulele Lady had kindly offered to drop us at the Airport (she was working somewhere over in that direction so it was more or less on her way) and we were downstairs around half an hour before the time she'd indicated on the off chance she might be running early. We didn't want to be keeping anyone waiting, did we?
The check in and departing the country procedures ran smoothly, producing a state of illusory well-being that was severely disrupted by an announcement around half an hour before we were scheduled to begin boarding.
Technical issues, they said, were going to delay boarding (and, subsequently, departure) by an hour and while I wasn't happy about the delay I'd rather they found things that were likely to go wrong before takeoff. In any case, with things up to date almost right on the originally scheduled boarding time it was a case of a bit of thumb-twiddling with the iPad battery around 83% and the iPod taking over the workload.
There was one major departure from revealed form this time around.
Faced with the prospect of an early morning arrival back in Cairns Madam thought it might be worth investigating the cost involved and the extra benefits obtained in Business Class. The original motivation was more legroom and the chance of a better night's sleep, but an extra ten kilogram luggage allowance is a significant factor for someone who'll be looking to bring a quantity of delicacies and other odds and ends she can't buy in Australia back with her.