THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

Two days to go now and so much has happened. I have had a few panic attacks about renting my house out, will they love my garden, will they talk to my lemon and olive plants and will they promise never, ever to play hide the sausage in my beautiful white bed? Apparently you can’t really put stuff like that in the lettings contract which seems somewhat unfair. If A-list celebs can make ridiculous demands about their dressing rooms, why can’t I make perfectly reasonable minor additions to a standard contract?

Over the past few weeks I have had health/eye/dental checks and all my jabs. Did you know that if you cough as they are about to put the needle in you don’t feel it - somehow it slightly breaks the pain connection for a nanosecond - and it really works. Coughing - the cure for pricks, who ever would have thought?

Since leaving work my time has been taken up with seeing friends and family and saying my goodbyes. Well that is not quite true, they were saying goodbye, I was saying “you will send me cash, marmite and earl grey teabags won’t you?”. I had a really lovely send-off from work - and fantastic presents, and have revelled in being wined and dined by friends and family - so thank you all so much.

I bought a beautiful sleeping bag (which I probably won’t need until I get to China in about 6 months time) and a rucksack. I proudly showed my beautiful new rucksack off to my colleagues and we named it Rufus. I spent an entire evening packing and unpacking Rufus to see how heavy it will be. I have a list of things to take which I intended to stick to - it is the basic essentials. I will stick to it absolutely, but obviously you have to chuck in half a dozen extra t-shirts, they don’t weigh much, plus two pairs of knickers for every day I am away … errr 360 pairs and enough make-up to last a couple of months - at my age wearing make-up is virtually the law.

Admittedly I did have to tone down on the knickers and took out a few essential items such as a pair of fluffy cat socks my mum gave me, 2 pairs of trackie bottoms, and some “not suitable for backpacking” underwear. But the rucksack is so full that the sleeping bag had to go on the outside (so that will still be there in 6 months time) and I don’t even have a lot of the stuff I am taking yet - such as a snorkelling mask and “fins”. Fins are what people who can scuba call flippers. I cannot scuba - but am trying desperately to be cool, and failing dismally.

I had a practice trek with the rucksack on my back - I trekked from the spare room down to the kitchen for another glass of wine. It was so heavy I had to have two glasses of wine to get me through the shock of it. Lastminute.com chose that day to send me an email telling me “you are what you pack”. In which case I am far too much crammed into far too small a vessel. Great. Well Rufus my friend it is either me or you - we need to think about reducing the weight of one of us, because as it is I struggle to stand up and sit down with the rucksack - that is hardly going to make me look like a seasoned traveller.

I then removed everything from rucksack, rerolled and repacked - I also discarded some non-essentials. Ten minutes went by whilst I debated with myself as to whether a pair of strappy sandals and Clarins lotion were essentials - and I decided that actually they are. My friend Claire calls it “middle-aged backpacking”. I call it thinking ahead. Just imagine if someone asked me out on a date and I had nothing to wear. In fact, just imagine if someone asked me out on a date - no … I can’t imagine it either.

Good news, I have a tenant - who wants to paint my lovely “prairie gold” walls magnolia. Somehow it calms me to know that my tenant is so reassuringly dull, although I can’t help but wonder if swingers and crack-cocaine addicts also have magnolia walls.

I have bought numerous items to add to my luggage, which is somewhat foolish considering I can hardly walk with the weight of it prior to the shopping trip, but I can chuck it all out when it gets too heavy - which will be at the train station on my way to the airport. Minor panic last Thursday when the “no hand luggage” rule came into being. 11 hours without reading - it will kill me. Finally government have “relented” (which will not be connected in anyway to sinking airline / BAA / WHSmith profits) and allowed small hand luggage and books … but still no make up. I will be landing in California with no make-up on! It will be bad enough for them that I weigh more than 6 stone and have never had plastic surgery, but I don’t think Californians have ever seen people over the age of 18 months old without make-up. However will they cope?

Everything is done. Except for landlord insurance, garden weeded and grass cut, car sorted, banks notified, bedroom packed away so tenant can fit her belongings into my space, house cleaned, hair cut, and roots redone. But apart from that everything - OK, so I have packed, read all the travel books and bought some new clothes - but I will get round to the other stuff some time during the next 48 hours.

You are clearly thinking ‘why is this woman writing in her blog, she has yet to move a step’, but you would be wrong - I went to Hayling Island last week, paddled in the sea, ate fish and chips and relived my childhood minus the part where you burn to a frazzle, eat so much rock and candy floss you throw up all the way home and get sand in to crevices you never knew you possessed. The next time I paddle in the sea it will be the South Pacific - and possibly a tad warmer than the Channel. That is it from me now - I promise to actually leave these shores before I update you on my nonsense.

Viv xx

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