And we’re off
With Leonard Cohen
Right behind us
The excitement one feels the morning of the day they are about to leave their country, is akin only to the excitement a child feels waking up to Christmas Day. There are butterflies in my stomach, I don’t feel hungry or full, I’m slightly restless, a little panicky—I can’t help feeling I’ve forgotten something. I check the tickets for the 50th time to ensure I’ve correctly read the day and time of our departure—Sunday 10th July, check, depart from Plymouth (definitely not Portsmouth) check, at 16.45 (definitely not 4.45am), check, phew, I think to myself—once again, check!
Over last few weeks we have packed up everything we own. We have given much of our prised collection of belongings to friends and family. In a call to be as ruthless as possible we have made multiple drop-offs to the local charity shop back in Cornwall (who’s owner eventually had to start refusing to take anything more from us). Everything we intend to take with us is now neatly contained within the back of our Freelander 2. Everything else as been packed into Oliver’s spare room, who has kindly agreed to take care of, amongst other things: Peter’s paintings, my crystals, one pack of unused tarot cards, a multitude of trinkets that have been collected on our various travels, cases full of clothes that neither of us have worn for the past 10 years and yet refuse to part with, a ukulele and guitar. We still have one guitar to take with us, our harmonicas and more clothes than we’ll ever need to wear.
Yesterday we managed to do an alternative RAT covid test, from home, without the need for a Boots pharmacist to prod us up the nose. We uploaded our results to an online portal and just like that, a certIfied Dr Michael Fonso MRGCP DavMED, located somewhere in the internet, sent both of us a certificate to say we were covid free! We had passed the test.
I made us a tomato salad to share with Oliver as our last brunch, we sip on coffee and chat nonsense talk, allowing time to pass, when all of a sudden it is 12.30 and time to hit the road. A quick stop into Sainsbury’s petrol station to fill up on gas—£115 to fill the Freelander, I hope it will be cheaper in Europe—hopefully Portugal will have by-passed this so-called cost-of-living crisis.
Approaching border control with passports, tickets and Covid certificates intact, I can’t help wondering if we will be allowed on-board. I wind my window down and pass said documentation to a smiling man, who really looks a bit too young to be deciding whether people can exit the country. He scans our passports, checks our tickets and then asks for our Covid Negative certificates. It suddenly crosses my mind that perhaps we should have gone to back-up Boots after all—these certificates don’t look at all legitimate. Who is Dr Michael Fonso MRGCP DavMED for goodness sake—he doesn’t sound real at all! “All good, please go through to lane 4”, “Oh, um, right—great—lovely—have a nice day” I over-the-top wave at the man as I drive off towards lane 4, smiling all the way. We are through—we have only changed this trip 15 times, I can’t quite believe it—off we go.