The last 10 days have been an absolute blur of work, emotions, food and farewells!

I spent all of last week writing the most detailed handover possible for my replacement at work, and learned somewhere in the middle that almost all my flights had been cancelled so had to rebook them! Somehow, I found the time to do my farewell office cakes- tiny little individual chocolate sponge globes! I would love to say them were simple, but they kept going wrong and eventually took me 3 days to complete!

Start again.

Yusssssssss.

As I’m leaving for the airport in about an hour, I don’t have time to give you a detailed recipe, but can briefly explain that for the “sea” I used white chocolate with blue food colouring (burnt the first batch, and learned on the second that blue food colouring works as a thickening agent… Did you know that?!) and for the “land” I used store bought roll out icing. I attempted to replicate the areas of the world I’m actually going to! Let me tell you, India is pretty hard to cut out of icing!

The Friday was my work/chums leaving meal! What a great nice! An array of 20 friends and colleagues were able to come out for it and show me a fantasically unforgettable evening! A great success!

Then came the Saturday, which was (so far as I was aware) the “family segment” that my sister had kindly taken the duty of organising. And organise she did! I was overwhelmed by all the surprises I had waiting for me!

What I tell ya!

I was in awe of all the creative things she’d come up with, and just blown away by all the people she’d got in touch with, all the cards I’d received and just everything really.

The following day I drove to London for my farewell with Diana. We managed to get a good deal and stayed in a lovely hotel in Canary Wharf called the Britannia International. We indulged in a good few hours of spa time, had a lovely steak dinner, a fabulous breakfast the next morning. It was then agreed that one night just wasn’t enough, so the lovely Diana treated us to one more, in another hotel closer to her work.

Tuesday morning we rose bright and early after 48 hours of the perfect farewell and I drove her to work. I was home before 8:30 and asleep by lunch time!

Yesterday, I had tea with the grandparents for a few laughs and final words of wisdom before jetting off. “Be sensible, and don’t take risks” was the overall message!

Last night, me, Mum and Dad indulged in Buckby Voujon curry and are leaving earlier today so we have time for a cheerio lunch at Heathrow airport!

In spite of all the lovely farewells, it still hasn’t sunk in that I’m going anywhere… I’ll let you know when it does!

Lovely gruesome weather here. 25c and clear skies in India…