The journey home

Poor little Alice. The journey home was a truly torrid time, starting with excess baggage charges and us both being selected for random additional security screeening (where exactly was Alice going to squirrel away her explosive devices?) and degenerated into sickness in the plane bathroom and a raging fever for our small heroine, just a couple of hours into the flight.

We had already decided to break the journey by staying in an airport hotel in Singapore, which was really fortunate because a) I couldn't get Alice's temperature down on the plane since she couldn't keep down calpol or even water and b) she really needed a change of clothes and a good wash; but also bad since we had to channel Tom Hanks in "The Terminal" for 24 hours, because the 40 degree body temperature was not going to decrease if we had ventured out - there were similar temperatures hitting the mercury outdoors. A brief threat from the hotel doctor to take her to hospital passed, when she finally swallowed the medication and her temperature started to go down, at least for a couple of hours at a time.

The Grandads have a lot to answer for though, really, since as soon as she felt marginally better, she started demanding that we look for cats. We had been curled up in front of "Curious George" (which is a lovely film that we watched six times) and Alice announced "Bye bye telly" and had me walk her around Terminal 3, hunting felines. I'm pleased to report that none were found, but I am certainly looking forward to a new obsession, since there don't seem to be any in the whole suburb of Clovelly either and Alice is beginning to sulk.

Anyway, our second plane journey was more relaxed - "only" 8.5 hours in duration, it was too short for me to get any real sleep by the time the crew had finished distributing the congealed fish that passed for dinner, but Alice slept like a log despite drenching her sleeping bag as her temperature rose again.

Thankfully it all turns out to be "just" her little ears again. I'm writing this on Saturday - 6 days after we set off and it's the first day that her temperature has been below 38.5 in all that time. She seems happier again too and we were only up 4 times last night (although once was the car alarm so can't blame her for everything), so fingers crossed I'll be able to go back to work on Monday. If you had told me two years ago that work would have been the easy and restful choice - I wouldn't have believed you. Funny how things work out.