Take Off

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.....
Jimmy (Pete's Dad) was supposed to be coming with us today but decided three and a half weeks ago to go to Liverpool early as his brother wasn't very well.  So off he ventured to the other side of the world on his own at the ripe old age of 85.  Today it's our turn to fly to the UK and meet up with him.

After months of planning and counting down, d-day suddenly descended on us in a rush and there wasn’t enough time to do everything we wanted before we left.  The last week was a whirlwind of final catch-ups and we feel very lucky to have so many wonderful friends and family.

My Dad, me and my brother Richard

Friday night games night crew

Goodbye dinner with Shaz and the kids at Portofino

The airport send-off

All the kids came to the airport to see us off along with our friend of forty years, Toff.  Everything went smoothly and we had fantastic weather for our flight out of New Plymouth.  At Auckland airport we had a final catch up with our good friend Sue and a final NZ coffee before heading through security.  Both our carry-ons were pulled aside for further inspection along with another self-confessed dodgy character.  While we waited for a very stressed lady to realise she couldn’t take her two bottles of alcohol on board, I mentioned to the dodgy character that he looked familiar.  Briana, you’ll be impressed that when I asked him if he was a politician, he said “Yes” and followed this up with “I’m Phil Goff”.  I told him you’d be mortified I had to ask who he was and he said you sounded like a very well-informed young lady.  I wanted to ask if he was off on holiday or business, but it was our turn to be questioned about our carry-on luggage.  Probably just as well as he may well have been off to some big summit meeting I should have known about.

We had to catch a bus out to our flight due to the renovation work going on at Auckland Airport – Pete was alarmed when he saw a man rushing off the bus as we were getting on and was on the lookout for mysterious packages, but I think the guy had just realised he was on the wrong bus.  Made it safely to the plane and were in the middle column of seats.  There were only three seats per row and Pete sat in the middle seat while the biggest man on the plane sat in the third seat, his bulging flesh encasing the armrest so Pete decided not to fight him on it.

The passengers continued to stream in and in walks Jannice Halliburton (an old friend from New Plymouth but originally from Liverpool), and her partner and they sat in the seat behind us.

Pete here. I have to say that the Cathay Pacific plane and crew were very nice. The plane appeared to be new and very streamlined and even came complete with Rolls Royce engines rather than the cheap American rubbish. The food selection throughout the flight was delicious, however, I couldn’t get a Baileys and Cointreau or a Jack Daniels so had to settle for a beer, a Steinlager, not even my preferred choice. Movie selection was limited as was sleep, which was in fact non existent. Julia did manage to grab three seats to herself, down the back of the plane, but once again, sleep was in short supply. Landing in Hong Kong around 9.30 ish we wandered through the vast corridors to gate 33, which Jannice had said was ours and began to write this piece, to stretch and to nap until our flight to Manchester.