Day Five: 500 Word Writing Challenge

Day Five:  500 Word Writing Challenge

Each day on this challenge I get an email to encourage me and give me ideas to help me write.  I can use them or ignore them as I please, just so long as I write my 500 words.  Today the suggestion was to “describe a day in my life that I will never forget”.  I liked that one so I will start with that and see where it leads for today as I am pretty well ‘freewriting’ this.

Leaving and Arriving

A family stand on the railway platform in Finland, its February and deep snow blows around the seven suitcases and four pieces of hand luggage that hold their belongings.  It is only late afternoon but already the light is failing.  In a just over a week the father will start a new job, but before then they need to find a place to live, a school for the children and sort out the administrative details of moving to this new country.

Forty eight hours earlier they had stood in a bright sunny villa in Dubai. It was in complete and utter chaos.  Despite knowing that they were going to leave for around six months, they really have not done enough, mostly through procrastination.  As a result they are about to start the most insane and crazy forty-eight hours of their lives.

Sure the cars and some large pieces of furniture had been sold, but to be honest the husband had been more concerned about holding farewell parties to say goodbye to people. As a result the villa was still full of all kinds of things and in twenty four hours it had to be empty, cleaned and the keys returned.

The husband and wife worked all day and all night, leaving the children in a hotel with a baby sitter while they tried to clear all the belongings.  A charity called with a large lorry to take away more than 20 bin bags of possessions that would go to the needy. Other items were placed by the garbage bins where fortunate people were able to pick up all manner of toys, baby goods, home appliances, clothes, shoes and crockery.   

The wife grabbed a two hour nap but the husband literally did not stop all night, cursing the five bedroom villa and the space that had allowed them to accumulate so much stuff over the years.  Cursing his procrastination at not getting all this and the many administrative chores completed before leaving.

Eventually, with the villa clear, they head back to the hotel to get the kids and send off the baby sitter.  They grab a breakfast and try very hard to get everything into the seven suitcases and four pieces of hand luggage.  Things still have to be abandoned in the hotel room as time runs out and a mad dash to the airport ensues. The family are in a taxi and the husband in a hire car that still has to be returned.

At the airport the wife hires a couple of porters to help with all the luggage while the husband deals with the car.  That completed they rush into the terminal where there is all the paperwork of clearing visas to be completed, yet the agent has gone to the wrong terminal for the flight.  He is on the mobile going mad wondering where we are and fearful we have absconded into the UAE.   Finally they meet and the paperwork process can begin.

Finally, (with a lot of help from friends), they are checked in and can take a breath, they are just in time for the flight and now for a few hours there is nothing that can be done but to sit back and relax and enjoy the flight.  A change in Frankfurt and then onto Helsinki.  The husband turns to the wife and says, “No matter what it costs we will hire some porters in Helsinki as there is no way we can manage with all this luggage”.

Well, there were no porters in Helsinki, not because they could not afford them but because there are no porters in Helsinki.   So the family struggled in relay with their cases up and down stairs and to the railway to start their new life.

That really was a day that I will never ever forget…..

(Note – there is actually much more to the story of these two days, but that is not for a public blog, but all of the above is 100% true)