we're leaving...on a jet plane

After seventeen years as Lana in London, I have now "upped sticks" and come to New Delhi. Rod got here in February, but we wanted the kids to finish the school year in Britain. That was a whole two weeks ago. We managed to leave London last Friday with 180 kilos of luggage, so unsurprisingly it’s not all unpacked yet. Rod promises never to say again, “we have a luggage allowance of 150 kilos, go on, add it.”

The flight was fabulous, after I had flirted with a triumvirate of gay check in guys so we could get all those bags (and two boxes, ran out of suitcases) on the plane without paying excess. One said to me, “What are you doing, going to live there?” I replied, “You don’t think he’d let me pack like this to go on holiday!”.

Upper Class is the only way I want to travel in future, so my life is going to be full of disappointment. The kids loved the clubroom at the airport, and had pizza and chips served to them so they didn't have to wait until the dinner service on board. This was good, because dinner wasn't served until almost midnight. They got in their sleepsuits before takeoff, and had their seats converted to beds as soon as the seatbelt sign went off. Keir slept the whole way, and had to be woken so his bed could be converted back to a seat for landing. Thalia woke about an hour before the breakfast service, and sat at the bar chatting to all the flight attendants. In the clubroom Rod and I had a Cosmopolitan (or two) and asparagus served with a poached egg and hollandaise (and smoked salmon for me) as our pre-flight snack. Thalia got her nails painted in the salon while I had a shoulder, neck and head massage. You'll be surprised to hear (NOT!) that the therapist said I was carrying a lot of tension between my shoulder blades!

The kids have been in school three days now, and both seem to be settling in okay. Well, Thalia says she is, and Keir doesn't say anything much, so we just assume like always :-) Thalia's in a class of 17 and has made a number of new friends - Johanna, Alisa and Laura. Keir is in a class of 22 and has made new friends called Dan and Harry and doesn't have a girlfriend yet.

It's not as hot here as I was expecting (thank God!), but after it rains the humidity racks up so it feels unpleasant until the rain evaporates. We sleep with the aircon on. It's loud, but easier to deal with than the heat. So far jetlag has been minimal (touch wood). Slept well the first night (amazing what exhaustion can do for you). The second night was more disturbed, but the last two have been quite good.

Yesterday a maid turned up and cleaned the house. She spent four hours, and collected together enough sand to have made a small sandpit. She came back this morning (when I thought the house still looked spotless) and collected enough sand to make it worth her while. It rained a fair bit yesterday afternoon, so that probably kept the sand level down. She'll come every day around 10.30 (except Sunday) to wash the breakfast and last night's dinner dishes, clean the kitchen, make the beds, dust and sweep the whole house including balconies and wet wash the floor. Once a week she cleans the bathrooms, but will do it more often if I ask her to. Normally this will take her two and a half hours (I'm guessing more on the day she does the bathrooms). For this we pay her 3000 rupees a month or £36. And then she goes over to Block E and does the same for our friends Nitti and Raj. My friend Kate and I used to share cleaners in London. I'd pay them £36 every two weeks, and they'd give me four hours cleaning! So some things are the same, and others are very different!