Time flies

So, it's off to South Africa, which promises to be a sunny 30ish degrees Centigrade. If it isn't, I shall kick and scream and demand my airfare back.

Years of holidays with my parents have ingrained me with airport issues... Mrs Nunn likes to be early for flights. I can understand that. Nothing worse than missing your flight. But Mrs Nunn likes to be really early for flights. Case in point:

I was eleven years old and flying - all by myself because I was a big girl - to the States to visit some family. The flight left from Heathrow at 3 p.m. Because it was an international flight, I was supposed to check in at 1 p.m. All good so far. And, to give Mrs Nunn her due, we did have to drive from Loughborough to Heathrow, which is a good couple of hours. So what time, dear reader, did we leave? About 11 a.m.? Maybe 9 a.m. to be on the extra safe side? No.

We left at 5 a.m. The reason? "This way we should miss rush hour." Fair enough. Except it was a Sunday.

We arrived, predictably, at Heathrow at 7 in the morning, before any of the little shops had even opened. And we sat there for eight hours until my flight took off. I have never eye-spied so many things in my life. These days I'd probably be arrested on a terrorist recon charge, I was looking at the place so closely.

Now, as everyone knows, I too am usually very, very early for things. But I'm wary about forcing my earliness on other people. So our flight today is at 6 p.m., and we need to drop our bags off at 5 p.m. (as we've already checked in online). Heathrow is probably an hour and a half from here by tube... so we should leave at 3, right? Maybe 2 to be on the extra safe side? Let's just put it this way... I've been packed since Tuesday evening, and at time of writing (1 p.m.) I'm beginning to tap my foot up and down a bit whilst TheBloke (TM) is still in the shower.

I will likely be an absent Plogger for the next couple of weeks - Internet access will be infrequent. But I will be thinking of you all and promise to write about elephants and dung beetles when I get back, if not before.