Christmas Eve/Departure day: We had to leave the house at 11a for the airport so there wasn’t time to do much this morning. I finally let Marlene make me breakfast and you’d think Christmas came early. I’d only been having coffee and yogurt all week as I’m not a breakfast person so she was pleased as punch to cook me an egg and toast.

Repacking my beast of a luggage took another hour, then I wandered into town to stretch my legs. It was busy with last minute Christmas shoppers and I did my bit spending my last St Helenian pounds on some chocolate.

Colin & Marlene drove me to the airport and came in with me to wait in the upstairs lounge. Their son was arriving on my incoming flight so we had some tea and cake before I headed downstairs to the Departure Lounge.

There I sat with Susan & Geoff and their son Harry; they were returning to England after the wedding. Geoff asked if I had hiked Blue Point yesterday. “Yes…… er, did you see me?” Which, as there was no one else on the hike I meant, did he see my car? Turns out no, but they hiked after me and saw my entry in the Post Box logbook! A small, small, small world.

The flight was 2/3’s empty which made it a quiet and comfortable journey. We gained two hours traveling back to Johannesburg so it was 9pm when we landed. I’m back at the airport hotel so just a 10 minute walk after clearing Immigration and picking up my bag.

Attempting to mitigate future jet lag I’m going to stay up as late as I can tonight – shouldn’t be a problem as I haven’t had internet for a week so I’ve hundreds of junk emails to delete and hundreds of FB posts to read, let alone a week of newspapers. My flight isn’t until 10:50pm tomorrow so I’ve all Christmas Day to laze around.