Begins The Odyssey..

Sunday 25th November 2007





The day started well enough. Then I woke up. Before me lay a monumental task, to clean the house to a standard that means the Queen is coming, and pack for our trip. Only one thing stood in my way....the wife. "Why are you sterilizing the house if you're going on holiday?", you ask. Normally I would say I have no idea. It's a thing women do that men get shanghaied into. They all do it. However, this time there's justification, the in-laws are housesitting for the middle weekend. Personally I, like all men, can clean the whole house in a hour but apparently I'm doing it wrong. Who knew there was a right way and a wrong way to hoover?





One domestic later we are working in different parts of the house. My mobile gets a text from Andy (of Andy and Emma, our partners for our trip to Florida), asking how we're getting on. The reply, "Blood, Death, Under the Patio...".





"Not going well then?"





3 hours of domestic bliss later, the house is an operating theatre and so starts the packing. Stuff goes in the cases, stuff comes out, other stuff goes in, same stuff comes out. Eventually there's a pile of clothes the size of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the contents of Emelda Marcos' shoe room sitting on the bed. I have a suit, a few shirts, couple of pairs of shorts and a pair of jeans, rest is Lynn's. Eventually we(?) whittle it down to two cases and a suit carrier.





I must admit at this point to a large degree of 'Guide Angst'. Em and Andy have never been to Florida, (Andy went when he was 8 but can't remember much) and I like to assume the role trip organizer. We've taken other people to Disney, Mairi, Caroline and Ian for example, (Other players in our company to be introduced when the time is right) but they were true Disneyphiles (IE, nucking futs..). I fear Em and Andy may be harder work to convert. With that in mind, my planning has been like a military operation.



Anyway, Em and Andy arrive dead on 1 o'clock. After noting that we're both still alive we load up and prepare to go. Andy has a brainwave. Let's book in online, that'll make sure our seats are safe. I fire up the PC and log on. Five minutes of reservation numbers and button pressing finishes up with the words "We cannot book Mr Andy in due to a security check". "What have you done now?", I ask. Does he have a secret past? Is he a spy? It's about 180 miles to Gatwick for us but luckily traffic is light. Not wanting to risk the Birmingham stretch of the M6, we take the toll road. We fly out tomorrow, so our target for tonight is the Sofitel Hotel Gatwick. I love this hotel. It's attached to the North Terminal and the rooms overlook the ramp so you can watch the aircraft coming, going and taxiing from the wall to wall picture windows. We book in and try to take a lift to the seventh floor. A simple task you might think except for two things, Emma hates glass lifts and the lift needs a room card and the buttons pressed in a certain order to go up. But not down. We spend a good 5 minutes going up and down in the lift like something out of Fawlty Towers. We took up the whole lift and it opened on the same people on the third floor three times. Think they walked in the end...Another great thing is the Chinese restaurant at the hotel, The Gatwick Oriental. Highly recommended if you're in the area. The consulting chef is Ken Hom.

After a four course set meal and several beers we retire to our rooms to await the big day. I can never sleep in hotels. Lynn's does a lot of travelling for work and she's used to hotel noise and beds. That said, she's like a parrot, put a cover over her head and she goes straight to sleep. I'm sure she could sleep standing up if she tried.....

Lynn sleeps soundly while I sit on the window ledge (It's wide enough to sit on and low) and watch the late night arrivals and take-offs for a couple of hours.