I might be eating my words in a few hours, but things have gone remarkably smoothly so far. Even the M25 was well behaved. None of the bags were over 23 Kg, our hand luggage weighed in legally (good job I didn’t pack any hand grenades), security didn’t do any body cavity searches and we didn’t set off any buzzers. They paused a bit over my laptop when they x-rayed it. Probably wondering why it is so big. The looming problem could be the Ethiopian custom officer who will x-ray our luggage out of the terminal in Addis Ababa. (Yes – out.) When they find the bag with all the bedding in it (those vacuum packing thingys are worth their weight in gold – we have 2 pillows, a couple of blankets and a king-sized quilt and no air all in one suitcase) also contains 4 oil filters for a Kia Sportage SUV then things will get interesting. (There’s a story lurking behind the oil filters – suffice it to say two of the four have come from Korea last week). I just hope they don’t confiscate any of my technology. I scattered it all around 6 cases, so perhaps they won’t notice how much there is.

The last few days have become progressively surreal. We’ve emptied the house, stored everything in a lockup, put the essential stuff in the capable hands of family and friends, packed our entire lives down to 6 cases and left home. We’ve said our goodbyes to family, friends and church, and now we have the interminable wait in the airport “lounge” for a “gate” to open. All the time hoping our luggage isn’t on its way to Dubai. So watch this space. It’ll all get interesting tomorrow morning after we’ve dozed the night away on the only Ethiopian Airlines Dreamliner (the one that caught fire a while ago on the runway at Heathrow and shut the airport for a few hours. They assure me they put the fire out).