With such a short connection in Doha we’d wondered if our baggage would make the second flight but no amount of positive thinking could change that it didn’t.  Never mind.  A ground handling agent came up to me at the carousel with a list of all the delayed luggage, thus confirming our six pieces were included and we were to go to the luggage desk to leave our details.

I was expecting a bureaucratic muddle but it turned out to be anything but.  I was quickly seen, and a polite and clearly spoken lady took me through what would happen and made sure I truly understood how to track the bags and how to reach the office if I needed to.  It was a bit paper-driven for immediate re-keying in to the tracking system but never mind once more; I was impressed and we all left the airport in relaxed frame of mind.

Every cloud has a silver lining, in our case this being that because we couldn’t unpack, we could try and use the time to have walk-in medicals for our visa renewals rather than booking ahead and waiting for them.  Thanks to a helpful friend we got lucky and this rather important item was ticked off the list.

Returning to the baggage, five items arrived on the 6:30pm flight the same day and the sixth – Deefer in their big box – at 02:30am the day after.   Each time I had used the tracking website had been flawless, and the two occasions I called the office were answered within two rings and I could hear footsteps as the receiver of my call walked to physically check reality compared to what the system said.

Delivery to our apartment was at about 5:30pm and you can guess where the unpacking priorities lay; foodstuffs that had by then been out of refrigeration and in an often hot environment for 52 hours (time will tell whether any of it is still edible), closely followed by that large cardboard box!

The happiness was lovely and the feeling of being home, complete.

Steve