And home

It is quite disconcerting when you have checked yourselves and your bags in at the airport, decided have something to eat before heading airside and have just sat down with a mushroom and cheese burger, chips and a glass of wine --- and your name is paged to return to the checkin counter (just as well we hadn't already gone airside!)

I went to find out  why they wanted me and what was wrong.

They had isolated Wendy's suitcase.  Apparently there was a battery in it.  This surprised me a bit.  I couldn't think what Wendy would be carrying that would upset the battery scanner.  The staff asked if I minded if they had a look.  I did not mind.  They couldn't find a battery. We looked in all the pockets. They shuffled through the contents.  No battery.  So bit by bit they unpacked Wendy's VERY carefully packed small suitcase.  No battery.  So they divided up the contents into small bundles and put them through the scanner in little trays.  Eventually, right at the very bottom, they found a small battery power pack.  This also surprised me.  It didn't seem like the sort of thing that Wendy would be carrying, plus she had watched Lindsey unpack her suitcase when we saw the multiple signs warning that mobile batteries (like power packs) had to be carried in the carry on luggage.

The staff and I re-packed the little suitcase - not quite so carefully but we did manage to get it properly closed. Then I went back to my abandoned burger, chips and wine and to berate Wendy for not having removed the battery in the first place.

She was completely bewildered.  She didn't have any batteries of any sort. I showed her the power pack.  "What is it?"she asked.  Not hers.  But in her suitcase.  I looked at it more closely.  It had an iPhone jack which didn't fit Wendy's phone.  Then light dawned.  She was using Tony's small suitcase.  The one he used for hospital trips or short visits, say, to Ballarat.  Extra power packs were exactly the sort of thing he would carry. Wendy hadn't noticed it tucked in the bottom corner of the bag and wouldn't have know what it was even if she had seen it.  Trust Tony to cause a degree of confusion at the end of our trip.  And Stella is complaining that we apparently took him on our travels but refused to take her - and she isn't dead yet :-D

Otherwise, our journey home was completely uneventful.  We didn't get much sleep on the overnight flight from Tokyo to the little Gold Coast airport but I got a bit.  We had plenty of time to get through immigration and customs and then catch our onward flight to Melbourne (It had a 110 minute turnaround time which I thought would be a bit tight but turned out to be plenty). Wendy took herself home on a suburban bus which very conveniently goes past her street - although it takes quite a bit of time. Lindsey and I taxied back to the flat and collected her car.

And now she is at her place, and Jim and I are at ours.  I should probably think about getting dressed. It's lunchtime and I am still in my pyjamas!