True to form we begin our holiday in extreme weather conditions. It is 1^O and thick frost. I am poised to freeze at the coach stop for an hour, surrounded by luggage, whist my travelling companion takes the car home and trots back down the hill. I attempt to quell the anxiety that he will not accomplish the fifteen minute walk in the forty five minutes we have allowed by researching for my next novel. I must apologise that writing news has been somewhat eclipsed by other matters in these blog posts but I will just say that Barefoot on the Cobbles is finished and is currently being read through for typos, repetitions and inconsistencies by several kind souls. Anyway, back to travelling. Apart from the effects of sitting on a metal seat I escape the worst consequences of the cold and we board the coach. Nobody bothers to check our ticket or hard won coach card.

The journey to Heathrow is uneventful. I remind myself the hard way that I really shouldn’t read on a coach but manage to stop before any dire occurrences. Once at the airport, we skim along the travellators until my shoelace, which, I hasten to add, was tied, is inexplicably eaten by the escalator. Fortunately I manage to jerk myself free and the shoelace gives way before I get sucked into the workings. I’ve watched CBBC’s Do you Know, with the slightly irritating Maddie telling us about how escalators work. In fact I have watched it several times. I emerge with a twinging ankle but otherwise unscathed. New hurdle is check in. I have done this online so there is just ‘bag-drop’ to negotiate. It is still nearly five hours until we take off and I worry that our bags will be whisked away on some earlier flight but it seems not. For some reason we have been guided to the ‘special assistance’ lane designed for the pregnant, disabled and elderly. I know I have put on weight but I don’t think anyone could believe that I was pregnant and my travellator incident induced limp is not that pronounced. Maybe my stress is showing! The stress levels were not helped by encountering a television programme whilst channel hopping last night. We alighted on The World’s Most Dangerous Roads. This depicted a coach travelling on a twisty road a couple of cms wider than the axles, with a sheer drop on one side. The cliff below the road was seriously undercut and bits seemed to be falling off the edge of the road with alarming regularity. Would you know, it turns out this was in Peru. One of our days involves ten hours of driving – oh dear! I am assured that our bags will magically find their way to Peru unaided, I am just a tad concerned that labels marked for our connecting airport in Brasil have been affixed to them.

We repair to a food outlet for sustenance. It is ten hours since we have eaten. News of our ‘special’ status has obviously preceded us as we are whisked past the tall bar stools to a table of a height more suitable to our aged forms. Then we run the gauntlet that is security. We try very hard to obey all the instructions. You obviously need to be an octopus or a whizz at Crackerjack (now I am showing my age) for this. I have to hold my hand luggage (if I let go of the handle it falls over), my bonus item laptop bag, my coat (I have two of these – I was equipped for the long cold wait), my passport and boarding card and then my laptop out of its bag. Thank goodness we don’t have any liquids as we prepared for this by putting them all in the cabin luggage. Then it turns out not only do I have to take my Kindle out and hold that (other e-readers are available) but my cardigan is allegedly a coat, so I have to carry that as well. My belongings, once I can start to let go of things, take up three trays. We don’t bleep and arrive safely at the departure lounge. Whoopee, free wifi, except my anti-virus security keeps telling me I shouldn’t use it. Unlike previous anti-virus software, there doesn’t seem to be a ways of telling it firmly that I don’t care, I want to communicate with my nearest and dearest and download today’s 100 emails. Randomly, the only website I can access is Twitter!

Once through security I attempt to refill the water bottles. The ridiculous fountain means that you can only fill them 1cm at a time, by decanting them from a cup, which fortunately we have. I return to my companion, ‘Make sure the top is on properly,’ I say, handing him his flask. It wasn’t. He now looks as if he has had an unfortunate accident. On the plane, we are provided with a superior looking set of headphones. They require a two pin socket. Cue a plane load of people fruitlessly searching for said socket. Turns out you sort of twist them sideways and just use one pin!