It was a nightmare of a marathon journey. The three of us had planned it for several weeks, Kenyon wasn’t really old enough to understand. We hadn’t told the folks at home as we wanted it to be a surprise to see the two of us complete with their grandchildren. I am not sure who thought of it first but we both think it was probably Sheila.
I was on a five year contract with BHP working on the massive gas project near Perth. Sheila was from Margaret River so she was delighted when the chance came up for us to move to Oz for a few years, she didn’t really like Surrey much although we had agreed that it would be our family home. The two children, Bruce and Kenyon got on well at school and loved the outdoor life. Bruce’s favourite word was ‘Barbie’ and no, he wasn’t talking about dolls. It was beginning to look as if I would be outvoted when the five years were up and, to tell the truth, I would be quite happy to stay in Oz as well, I just worried about the folks back in Farnham who were getting on a bit now and to be so far away if anything went wrong …
First we told the folks that we were going off on a short trip up the coast so would be out of Skype and mobile range for a few days then we set off. The Quantas to Singapore was ok and we had a arranged to have a two day stopover which we all enjoyed but it went downhill fast after that. The Quantas A380 inbound was held up which meant it was going to be twelve hours late leaving so we had to cope with Bruce and Kenyon in the terminal as we had checked out of our hotel. After that there was a mix up on the seats so we had to throw a bit of a strop to get seats together.
We finally got everything sorted, the plane took off and we relaxed although we had hoped the children would be tired but they had just had a long sleep in the terminal so Sheila and myself had to keep them entertained when all we wanted to do was sleep. I have never been so glad to see Heathrow. We got through the usual hassle with immigration in Terminal 4 and then they had rented out our car because we were late. It took an hour to get a replacement. M4, M25, M3, so much traffic! What else could go wrong now? We were nearly there and couldn’t wait to see the folk’s faces when they saw that we had turned up for Christmas.
Around the town and then down the lane to their house. There was no car on the drive so maybe they were out shopping? We drove in and tried the door and looked through the windows. No signs of life. I knew they were friendly with the young couple next door so I went round and knocked on their door even though I had never met them. A youngish guy came to the door.
‘Hi, I’m David, Eric and Mary’s son,’ I said. ‘Do you happen to know where they are?’ He looked surprised.
`I thought you lived in Australia?’
‘Yes, we do, but we’ve just arrived to spend Christmas here with them.’ He looked even more surprised.
‘B, b, but they drove up to Heathrow yesterday to fly out to spend Christmas with you, they wanted it to be a surprise.’
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