Christmas & The Aftermath

Me and my holidays.

Ok I said I had a wealth of stuff to write about and I did but I can’t seem to bring myself to write. Sucks. Ok I’ll start off with preparing to leave.

I spent Christmas with my family which was lovely. I drove up to Birmingham with my brother. First time driving on the motorway. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be except for traffic and fog. I had my music on blast and food and drinks in the car. (For some reason I thought that would come in handy just incase – loll) It really wasn’t that bad – just a bit disconcerting to realise I was doing 90/100 (miles) and I didn’t even realise it. Plus I broke soo many speeding rules – the bloody cameras in Birmingham have probably made a fortune off me. Sucks!

Christmas was fun. The wrapping of presents, cooking the food, the family arguments and tantrums, spending time with my favourite aunty, eating, drinking, debating about whether a family member is gay, discussing whether some of my engaged cousins are really ready to get married, calling/texting loved ones and friends, overeating and sleeping on Christmas day, opening all our lovely presents, getting the receipts for stuff we wanted to exchange, showing our alcoholic sides with demands for wine, vodka, baileys (or maybe that was just me …), and generally just having fun together.

On the 26th, I hopped into my car and jetted back to London to the SHOPS!! I LOVE JANAUARY SALES. However this year, I really didn’t do that much. 2 sales ago, I bought 20 pairs of shoes, the last one I cut it down to about 12/15, Guesses for how many this year? 1 and it wasn’t even on sale!!!! Are you not proud of me?

These are my babies and aren’t they gorgeous?? They are purple suede and look AMAZING on. I’ve wanted them for ages since I saw them. I even sent my friend to the states to get them but they had sold out. LUCKILY, I found them here so I’m happy. The KG ones I initially wanted didn’t look as nice on me so in an effort to be sensible, I didn’t buy them. Ahh ok I forget, I also acquired 2 other shoes but they were early December so don’t quite count as January Sales ;-)

I got home from shopping on the 26th, chilled, unwound from the stress and then started packing to go to Nigeria. I don’t know why I do this to myself. Always, I start packing the night before I travel, so end up staying up all night or at best getting 3 hrs sleep.

Now I was flying Virgin Nigeria for the first time and for some reason didn’t think to check their weight restrictions. Their website was really not informative at all (No joke. No where did I find anything telling me what weight restrictions for economy were – the most I got was 30kg for business class (?) and “a generous allowance” for first. Darling mummy, fountain of all knowledge said (from what she had heard from other people – as with her nose up in the air informed me she only flies BA - uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh) it was 23 kg for 2 pieces. She then proceeded to give me a suitcase (fully packed with gifts for people) to take for her. That left me with my one suitcase and my hand luggage.

I am a CHRONIC OVERPACKER. I decided to be really strict with myself this year. I would only take about 10 pairs of shoes as opposed to the 20 I took previously. I was going for 9 days, so 1 or 2 basic day time knock abouts and the rest to go with my outfits. I was prepared to (gasp) double up my shoes on outfits. Next was the battle of the clothes. I kept getting asked if I had shopped for Lagos – and hell no! I don’t understand that. I’m really not trying to impress anybody. I have enough clothes I wear here and I really don’t send if someone there sees me wearing something I had last year. I piled up a collection of my summer clothes and then picked the ones I wanted. I still had too much, so I cut them down again. I tried counting the outfits for the number of days I was there and finally had it sorted. I put all the stuff in my suitcase, packed my toiletries, had a shower and felt slightly smug with myself. This was about 4.30am and my mum was going to take me to Victoria at 5, so I could get the Gatwick express. She finally got up, took one look at my hand luggage and quietly said “se you know that if you’ve taken too much stuff, there’s no where to keep it? You can’t come back home to drop it. I heard that they are very strict and will only let you take 6kg” See stress. I mean 15 mins before we’re about to leave she tells me this, I now had to start unpacking and removing stuff so I had the right amount. My hand luggage was a little wheelie case which I loaded with the heavy stuff so I could take 23kg. I started stripping my luggage so I had the bare essentials. I stripped her case as well so I could fit my stuff in. By this time it was too late for her to take me, as she was travelling that morning as well and didn’t want to miss her flight. I thus had to call a taxi and pay £40 to go to flipping Gatwick. (Now the taxi journey in itself is a whole other story) but I was sooo stressed!!!

I keep telling myself I’ll never do this again – I’ll pack early (:-D ok I lie, I know I’ll never do that) but I’ll at least be prepared so I know my luggage capacity and stuff. Upon all that, I still ended up taking too much stuff as I didn’t wear half my clothes!

Hope you all had safe flights (I was soo glad the stupid London fog didn’t affect my flights!) and had a good holiday. Part 2 coming up.