Holiday ~ Looking Back I; Many Firsts

I can't help but notice that I managed an awful lot of posts about looking forward to my holiday, well you can anticipate at least as many, but probably more looking back.   I have only been back in Blighty for a few hours but already I recognise a couple of themes from the week, the main one being a week of firsts.   I won't go into all of them now but instead will try to start at the beginning, or maybe even slightly before that.

We flew out on Friday morning, that meant most of my preparation and virtually all of my packing had to be completed on Thursday evening.   Not sure what was most amazing, that I managed to pack everything I wanted into one case (and hand luggage) or that I was within the weight limit of 20kg.   While I was packed and ready when my friend (I will call him Bob because he was) arrived to pick me up.   I would have liked to have had more time to clean up before leaving, but at least I had fed the fish and washed up.

The first first of the week was going to be the air travel.   It has to be stated (or maybe it doesn't but I'm going to anyway) that I was "flying pretty" but all the paperwork had to be in my legal (male) name, also that Bob is just a friend.   Check in went fine, with no issues around any difference between my presentation and my paperwork, but that was the first of many times that we were assumed to be "a couple".    Next came security, inevitably I did set off the alarms and had to go through the full body scanner  and get a pat down.   All the way through I was treated with respect, referred to as madam and the pat down was conducted with respect but efficiently by the female officer.

As with everything else the flight when pleasantly enough and was pretty uneventful, arriving at Luqa airport we bought our duty free supplies for the week and passed through passport control to collect our luggage.   A small piece of glee to start the holiday off well when the Malta passport officer looked at my passport and started to say that I had given him  my "husband's passport by mistake", then half way through looked at Bob (six foot five and black hair) looked back at the photo and realised. He had the good grace to look a little sheepish and did the classic "oh, right yes, erm thank you Miss"