After all our trepidation about the flight home, it went remarkably well. Emily was more of a handful on the one hour train ride to Narita than the 12 hour flight. Once through Departures she was in raptures to see so many of her beloved hikoki (aeroplanes). I was very impressed with Terminal One, having only been through T2 before, which feels more like a provincial airport in some backward banana republic (well, bit of an exaggeration, but there is a marked difference). We barely had time to trawl for a few souvenirs before we boarded the Virgin plane.
Right from the start I was pleasantly surprised by the airline and will always use them wherever possible. The staff were genuinely friendly and not snooty like BA. They had given us a bulkhead row of four seats in the middle, which was great in terms of legroom. The downside was that the armrests could not be folded back to allow Emily to lie down, but luckily the flight was only half full so we were able to move her for naptime. She was happy enough watching kids TV and playing with some new toys I'd brought until nearly half way, when after being awake for nearly 10 hours she got upset. Nick took her off to another row and they both slept for a while. I caught up on some essential viewing and watched Slumdog Millionaire.
The rest of the journey was spent taking it in turns to walk up and down the aisles with Emily as she followed the other small children on board. Just before we arrived in London she slept again, missing the landing and waking up once in the terminal. I was surprised not to feel any strong emotions on touching down on British soil but maybe I was just too knackered. There were no obvious signs of any swine flu measures in place at the airport; I had envisaged forms to fill and heat cameras trained on us.
Given how weary she must have been, Emily was remarkably chirpy, but again she gave in to sleep on the drive to Reading. I'll gloss over the car hire: suffice to say it was an unwelcome reminder of the horror of British customer service, and when as tired as we were it made me feel like getting onto the next flight home again. After 20 minutes wrestling with the baby seat ('health & safety' cited as the reason they couldn't help us fit it or even explain it to us) we hit the road, making a few wrong turns before finally finding our way out onto the M4.
We were soon pulling up in School Terrace, where we were glad to see the welcoming faces of Mum, Fi, Dan and Fern. Emily was asleep again, but after rubbing her heavily-bagged eyes a few times she got stuck into Fern's toy basket. I quickly set up the basement room so she could get to bed; it was past 7pm and I had high hopes that she would sleep deeply through until dawn at least. No chance: after an hour she woke screaming and I had to take her out of the strange cot and put her on the bed. It wasn't long before I joined her there myself.
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