Friends arrive

---

Ooh big day, not so much that our friends are arriving but because I have to pick them up at the airport on my own… I cheat and cadge a lift in with the other one so I only have to drive the car from the school. In a departure from my usual form, I’m at the airport on time and end up parking the car miles away so that I don’t suffer the embarrassment of parking it badly. The plane’s delayed but I bump into someone from the stakeholder meeting I had a couple of weeks ago and chat with them not then realising that my mates have arrived, so neglect to give them the dramatic run and hug welcome. Lovely to see them both, they look exactly the same (I suppose we have only been away nine months but it feels like forever) and I meet the little’un ‘Z’ for the first time who’s soooo cute.

I hike back to the car and return to the airport building and a dedicated pick up space, mildly perplexing the middle aged British couple who’d obviously coveted it for their taxi. Sorry, tough, see space/drive in it, I’m a basic range kind of driver…

I nervously take us from the airport to the car hire place which is not all far - hurrah! At this point, it would be good to say that everything went like clockwork but that would just make this blog boring I guess. Not that I make it up, it would be hard to.

So what happened? We get to the car hire place and as we have a residents deal and are paying in rupees, we’re asked to pay in cash, so I drive down the road with ‘Abs’ to the bank that’s close - unlike my parking to the kerb - though in true Seychelles style the woman behind me who’s parked in the middle of the road, makes me look good (opportunities to parallel park here are limited and I like that).

I stay in the car as we have laptops etc but start to get worried when Abs is too long a time -what can he be doing? I end up locking the car and lumbering along with three rucksacks to see what the problem is. There were two, one the machine had taken his card (though it was returned), two he’d forgotten to tell his bank he was overseas and couldn’t get any money out. Hmmm. I take money out instead and once back at the car hire place, handover part of the dosh and agree the rest can be paid later. They get upgraded to a Hyundai i10, woohoo, but the bad news is that the car seat is bit rubbish.

We both drive back to the school where I drop off the car for the other one and hop in with Abs and NRG for the ride back to our place. NRG does a great job getting up the steep hill to our place and I adopt Z as my back seat bud celebrating with a dedicated song to the tune of Backstreet Boys Awright, how long before I drive everyone insane?

We have a dinner of spinach and pine nut risotto -little do they know what a treat this is! We celebrate our being together with a bottle of bubbles they brought over and get very excited about all the other goodies they brought too - we be very lucky people!

---