Goodbye Melbourne, Hello Inverloch

Today I finally left my solitary existence and reunited with Maggie and Laila (the dog). It was a day that I had been looking forward to eagerly ever since I returned from Cuba. What I was not so eagerly looking forward to was tidying and cleaning the house before I left. After two and a half weeks of living as a bachelor, it was starting to show the collateral damage from missing a woman's touch.

The first step was to pack about everything I own into the car. I guess I should be glad that the Skoda has such a large boot. Believe me, I needed every cubic centimetre of the space. After packing clothes, tools, computers and cycling gear, I started packing all the food from the fridge and pantry. The car sunk a little further on its suspension.

Then I started the housework. Vacuuming really is exhausting work, especially when you are just not really into it. It was somewhere during all this activity that I made a shocking discovery - one of the car keys was missing. From bitter personal experience I already know that a replacement costs about $600. Considering the massive hit that our finances had taken over the past few weeks, that was enough to send me into a tailspin.

I searched high, I searched low. I even unpacked all the stuff that I had already packed, just in case it had accidentally got caught up in other things. There was no sign of it. I did what any other elderly lunatic would do under the circumstances - I started to panic. The problem was the more I panicked, the less logical my searching became. I needed to reset.

I decided to return to the vacuuming, hoping that it might also suck some of the cobwebs from my addled brain. My strategy worked. After a short time of cleaning, my mind started to clear and I thought of some other very logical places to look. Within a couple of minutes the lost key was found. I almost jumped for joy.

The final step was to put the bike carrier on the car and load our bikes. Then it was a final look around, not knowing how long it will be before we can return home. By 3 pm I was backing out the driveway and on my way.

I had heard about police stopping people in their cars and hitting them with monstrous fines. With the bikes on the back and the car packed to the roof, I guess I looked exactly like someone heading off for an (illegal) Easter holiday. I would not have been surprised if I had been pulled over and interrogated, however the entire journey was achieved without incident.

Maggie and I will now be settling into a new lifestyle, until the isolation period is officially over. The hardest part is being separated from our family and friends. It will also be interesting to see if our marriage survives being trapped together in such small quarters for an extended period of time.Read more