July 15th

Leaving for Australia today!
Dave arrived at about 11am and we handed the keys over to him for the next six weeks so he, Jo and Grace can housesit while we are away.
Once Julio had arrived they drove us to Gloucester station. We had an uneventful trip via Reading to Gatwick where we met Mum and Dad in the landside departure lounge. Had lunch at Garfunkels then went up to check-in and got the privilege of checking-in at business/first class desk! Said goodbye to Mum and Dad and went through to passport control. We spent some time looking through the big windows at the planes and the girls played with a couple of computer terminals called 'FingaBox'. Once our flight had been called we got to the departure lounge in time to see the captain and flight crew board the aircraft. Another viewing window enabled us to see the captain prepare for take-off as well as the luggage trucks loading up the plane. The girls were getting very excited by this time.
We boarded the plane once it was ready and found our seats. Abi was apprehensive as we taxied down to the run-way, she held on tight to Bex's hand and as we took off it was clear she wasn't completely confident but did say once we were airborne that 'it wasn't that bad'. Using the on-board screens we were able to watch the land drop away underneath us – amazing! Once in the air the on-board entertainment system proved to be so exciting that none of the children got to sleep for ages. It didn't help that we had re-set our watches to Dubai time (UK+3) and thus it was gone midnight immediately. The evening meal was served shortly after take-off – the girls weren't impressed by their brightly coloured plastic meal boxes with all sorts of things to eat in as well as a watch and a puzzle, nor by the hot meal. Ours was nice though but it felt a bit late to be eating. I think it was about 2am Dubai time before I managed to persuade the children to try and sleep. The seats weren't very comfortable and I don't think we managed to get much sleep at all.