Well, we made it and are very happy to be back in Céret.
What a week! We left Nelson in a bit of a whirlwind, handing over the keys to
the house to the Haven's agent as she walked in the door (for a final
inspection) as we walked out. A little time to spare at the airport before we
had to say goodbye to Sally. We had a quiet day on Thursday with my Dad, and
borrowed his car on Friday afternoon for a secret rendezvous at Mission Bay with Bella and
Nic.
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We had an extremely enjoyable afternoon and evening with them and then back
home with my father none the wiser that they had flown over from Melbourne
for his party. They collected Alastair
from Auckland airport at 5:55am (!) the next morning.
John and I prepared a proper cooked breakfast for Dad and
then my brother collected him in his brother-in-law’s 1938 Chevy with a 8.2 litre modern V8 engine.
They had a fun trip out to the birthday venue – a garden café which we had
hired for the day. Unfortunately the weather was overcast but at least it had
stopped raining and we could get outside to take lots of photos. The afternoon
went off extremely well with a jazz band, speeches (including mine), cutting the
cake and so on. Dad thoroughly enjoyed making his speech, and
predictably included many stories and anecdotes about his earlier years,
including a hint about when he lost his virginity!
It was really great catching up with lots of cousins, aunts
and uncles, and Dad was just blown away that Bella and another grand-daughter
had travelled over from Melbourne and Alastair from San Francisco. Ali gave a
great speech and it was pretty special – he is Dad’s only grandson. Back home to watch the All Blacks game and
Dad also played some tunes on the piano.
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The next morning was rather slow and pouring with rain. We
drove back into Auckland and met up with Bella and Nic to have lunch with them.
A teary farewell all around with Bella and Nic heading off (they flew out to
Melbourne the next day) and Dad taking us to the airport. Later that evening
John and I flew out an hour before Alastair flew back to San Francisco. All-in-all it
was a fantastic few days, we got to spend a lot more time with Bella and
Alastair than we had expected and Dad had a ball.
Our flights went very well, even the 14 hour flight from Sydney
to Dubai. John and I both watched a few movies and slept or dozed for about 7 hours.
John then starting watching some Top Gear
programmes and commenced to chuckle away quietly for a few hours. I instead,
tuned into the TV series Downton Abbey,
which I had only ever caught a few glimpses of before. Big mistake. Four episodes of Series 3 later and I was hooked. As
soon as we jumped on the 7 hour flight from Dubai to Barcelona I cranked up the
screen and watched the next 4 episodes, plus the Xmas special. I paid the price
later. Without getting any more sleep, I started to fade rapidly over the next
few hours, which included catching the bus from one terminal at the airport to
another, a train into town, another train from there to Perpignan, a bus from
Perpignan to Céret and finally walking the last 10 minutes to our apartment. I kept
falling asleep and jerking awake every few minutes and even started
conversations with John that made no sense. It felt really peculiar. End result
– a clear recognition that serious sleep deprivation and me do NOT go together.
Poor John. During the last few hours he had to deal not just with a whole
heap of luggage but also a spaced-out wife.
Note to self: Make sure I am fully up-to-date with Downton Abbey before embarking on any
long-haul trip!
We finally staggered up the stairs to our little apartment at about
10pm. Fell into bed and I slept for 10 hours. It is now Wed afternoon and we
are both now pretty well recovered, with John managing to sleep virtually
through an entire mighty thunderstorm last night with hardly batting an eye.
