Countdown

In one week's time we will have flown into summer - an English summer … but it will still be summer with light evenings, green gardens in bloom, Wimbledon on the TV and strawberries for tea!

The kids keep asking when we should start packing and can we sort out suitcases now, what is it like going on an aeroplane, and how fast does it go? I tried to give them an idea of the G-forces of take off, by accelerating fiercely down our dirt road, but don't think I really succeeded in giving a genuine flight simulator experience.

This will be the first time they have been to England since we moved here, Youngest's first time ever. I've no idea how it will seem to them. Our son was only three when we left, he has just dim memories of it. To me when I went back in January, it all was instantly familiar, eerily the same, the only thing that had changed noticeably was the number plate protocol on the cars.

England is the background to a lot of the children's stories we read, they've seen pictures and movies and we live in a fairly English culture here at home, but it will be interesting to see whether it seems foreign and exotic to them, or whether they feel quite at home.

I have a last minute rush of work to get done before I even think about packing and we have to have our Mid-winter festival on Saturday - it would be unthinkable to miss having it, just because it seems crazy to have 40 or so people to our house two days before flying half way across the world, so vats of soup, loaves of bread, bonfires and lanterns will miraculously materialise without any advance planning at all.

I also have to put together sponsorship profiles and photos for our school to take with us and for another mother who is going to Germany and is hoping to interest her old school in sponsoring a few of our pupils, the list of kids needing a sponsor is way longer than it should be and I am going to have to dig out their school photos from last year and attach it to the right profile, probably at midnight on Friday, once I've sent off my last article!

All the passports came through except Youngest's British one which is still waiting on the appropriate version of her SA birth certificate - she's going to have to enter Britain on her South African passport, so we have the dilemma: do we hope they will let her through in the British passport queue at Heathrow or should we split up so that my husband takes her through the foreign passport queue, just to be safe? … I mean how many five year old terrorists are there out there, but I'd hate her to get the rough end of the immigration officials at such a tender age.

On a completely different note: I kept Youngest at home today because she had conjunctivitis and had been awake in the night, plus I didn't want her to give it to the rest of the kindergarten. An hour into the morning she came and leant against me at my desk: "I don't know what to do. I wish I was at school" she grumbled … Success! She has finally made the transition from reluctant and recalcitrant schoolgoer to keen kindergartener!