Scribblings from the Mitchy Side

..or how I learned to navigate from Redhill to Heathrow blindfolded.

This all started waaay back around February when I offered to meet alissomora and her sister at Heathrow on the momentous occasion of them moving to the UK. Boy, the time sure went fast for lo and behold, the week arrived.

Those of you who know and love me know that early mornings are not, umm, my strong point, shall we say? So I hope you are impressed with this because I wasn't late once! Well, not so late it mattered anyway......

alissomora has spent the last few weeks in the USA so her flight was due in from JFK at 7.40am on the Wednesday morning. I left in PLENTY of time, I really did! My alarm clock went off at 5 and I was out of the house by 6.00! Sadly, there was a very annoying traffic jam on the M25 which slowed me down rather a lot and meant I didn't scamper into Heathrow's Terminal 4 until just past 8am. Which was roughly 5 minutes after the plane landed, it having been delayed by 20 minutes, so I was saved. Hurrah!

I took station near the Starbucks and waited, hoping to goodness I was going to recognise Liss when I saw her. As it turned out she must have walked right past me but she was smart enough to just go straight to airport information and have me paged :) That saved a lot of time! Hugs exchanged, we hauled her luggage - rather heavy stuff! - to the car and set off to her new home. We were happy to note that the Animal Quarantine building, where we were due to collect the cats on Thursday was a mere stone's throw from the terminal, thus simplifying matters considerably.

Redhill is in Surrey and, as it turned out, only about 40 minutes from Heathrow, which was great. Our first task was to find the estate agents who manage the house, where Liss needed to sign the contract and pick up the all important keys. I had printed off various maps but as it turned out, we blundered onto the right road first time and, after a bit of turning around, found the entrance to the nearest car park bang opposite the agents. Hurrah! Contract and keys acquired, we were gratified to discover that the house was mere minutes away, although I did miss the turning the first time around. Oh well :)

I have to pause here and worship the lady who got the house for them, because she did an outstanding job. It's excellent! Big enough but not too big, near to the town centre and station, in an excellent location and all round a Very Good Deal. So Sarah, take a bow, you're a star :) I'll be recommending you to anyone else that wants to move into the UK, without any qualms at all.

Having explored every nook and cranny of the house, and wrestled the monster suitcases out of the car, Liss did a bit of unpacking and sorting, before it was decided to go into the town and buy some necessities. We took the car because we anticipated having vast amounts of stuff to bring back and we were absolutely right :) Pausing only to inhale a burger and some fries, we scampered about Redhill town centre and explored. It's a lovely town, it's got everything, and it's easy to walk about and explore. First up, we popped into a shop to purchase some saucepans, spotting a very nice box set of five AWT pans for only £30! I told Liss to snap it up and she did - turned out that it had been priced wrongly and should have been £50 but they had to sell it for £30! Ahahahahah! We took the box back to the car, because it was a bit too bulky to lug around, and then went to storm Sainsbury's for the 9000 things you need in a new house when you're starting from scratch. Vast numbers of carrier bags were lugged down to the car before we made one final trek around the town for a duvet and some pillows. Thank goodness for Woollies :)

Foot sore and very weary - Liss was pretty much running on fumes by this point but kept going - we went back to the car for the last time and drove home. Very little was done after that apart from sporadic unpacking of shopping and dozing on the sofas. Liss went to bed at 7pm and I curled up to snooze not much later than that, for in the morning we had to be at Heathrow for 6am to meet morielfeanorwen and pick up two cats!

I didn't sleep terribly well, mostly because I got too hot on the sofa I was sleeping on but I slept better when I switched to sleeping on the floor. All too soon, the alarm clock went off - 4am! Argh! I had a shower in a bid to keep me awake, as both Liss and myself felt it was important the driver didn't attempt to sleep drive :D, and we were soon off again to Heathrow. Liss, bless, was practically hyper about seeing her sister again and started waiting at the barrier the minute she saw the plane had landed. Heh. It took a little while but finally a very tired morielfeanorwen emerged, having survived a 23 hour flight from Oz. Rather her than me is all I can say! We didn't dawdle about but headed straight for the car so we could go over to Quarantine and see how long it would be before the cats were ready to go. We knew it could take up to five hours so we wanted to find out for sure and leave my mobile number with them, allowing us to clear off back home and rest up a bit. We were told 4 hours and that they would ring us as soon as the cats could be collected.

Back we went to Redhill, with the sisters talking a mile a minute and generally catching up. At home, Liss rustled up scrambled eggs on toast for us all which was gratefully received. It wasn't long before we got the call from Quarantine saying the cats would be ready for collection by 10am! Fantastically fast, that was, and we were impressed. So we headed Heathrow-wards once more, only this time we paused in Reigate so that Liss and Aimee could go into Dreams to buy Aimee a bed. That done successfully, we headed back to Terminal 4 and a joyful reunion with two gorgeous ginger and white pussy cats :) They were both a bit pissed off at having been rudely stuffed into carriers and put in a cargo hold for so long but otherwise, apart from the vocal complaints, looked in great health. We juuuuust about managed to get the cat carriers in the car - this was the one big worry I'd had, that the carriers would be too big. However, by taking the back shelf off so the boot was open, we were able to put one carrier in the boot and wedge one next to Aimee on the back seat. Phew!

The journey back was mostly in silence, as morielfeanorwen started to doze off and neither Liss or myself had much conversation at this point. We got back home and released the two cats into their new home. Gorgeous creatures they are, one fluffy, one short haired, both ginger and white and beautifully marked. Crookshanks, the short hair, decided he was going to show Liss how pissed off he was with her by giving me lots of fuss and attention and spent at least half an hour curled up next to me on the sofa purring his head off :)

While Liss used my mobile to ring BT and sort out getting an account - THAT was painful! Good grief! - I slurped tea and snoozed with the sound of Crookshanks purring in my ears :) Finally, I prised myself off the sofa and said goodbye, for I wanted to get back around the M25 before the rush hour started. Wearily, I turned my car back towards Heathrow but this time kept on going past it until I got home, which I did around 3pm.

There was napping after that :P

In total, I clocked up 266 miles in two days *heh* but it was well worth it and I'm glad I was able to help them move in. But I won't be sorry not to have to do that Redhill/Heathrow route ever again :P