The getaway

Well, pretty stressy at times including when I went down the street in the morning to get some Swiss Francs (the exchange, which I had been watching for weeks, had suddenly zipped up the charts); of course, finding Swiss Francs in Albury is like finding the proverbial 'needle in the haystack' but I did get some at Travelex.

But I undermined this success by dropping my 2 bank keycards (along with my Commercial Club card) in Dean St and when I got home and realised, I had a major melt-down, which I have to say wouldn't have been pretty to watch.

I back-tracked via Aldi where I had called in after the banking expedition to buy milk and spent a HUGE some of money: $2, the cheapest I had ever got through spending at Aldi ... by which time the police had rung the home phone - & wasn't THAT lucky: 1) David was home & 2) David answered the phone!

So someone had 1) picked up the cards 2) handed them in 3) the police must have rung the Commercial Club and got my number from the membership records. I could have done without this, but in the scheme of things, I was a lucky girl.

When our friend Carmel called in about 15 minutes later at home to get a medical form signed by My Friend (1), all was reasonably calm but I was slightly non-plussed when she commented "God your house is a mess!". And I suppose it was!

Finally I had MF2 fully packed - although this necessitated a 'drug-run' to the chemist as we were about 3 tablets short; at least the dog got a walk.

And I finally closed and locked my suitcase - which usually signals that something else will need to go in - THREE times I locked and re-opened the suitcase before we boarded the car and set off down the highway; I suspect the 3 kilos taken out yesterday have been replaced by 1.5 kg finding its way back in. Oh well, I ended up weighing in midway between the boys: Andrew had the heaviest bag and David the lightest. Pity I couldn't apply my knack of supervising HIS packing to my own!

I panicked momentarily when I looked at my watch as we were leaving and saw that we were away half an hour later than planned; but then realised that I had built such a large contingency into the departure time that we were in fact half an hour AHEAD. Good job!!!

We had a lovely meal with Alison & Alex at their place - along with his parents - and then Alison kindly drove us to the airport; they live only half an hour from Tullamarine: very convenient.

The queues were painful, but we were finally through and just after midnight we were finally off.