And so here we are, some 11 months (and 3 days!) on. We have just had a lovely night's sleep and a bacon and egg roll for breakfast. The journey back wasn't without incident however, oh no siree! We arrived at Madrid after our 14 hour flight from Quito (stopover for 2 1/2 hours in Guayaquil) only to be confronted by the police from hell scanning all bags as you enter the country. We tried to explain that our hard drive had been corrupted once by a scanner in an airport so could we please show you that it works and be on our merry way. Oh no, said Mr. Police Brutality 2003/4 it has to go through. After a few minutes, realising if we didn't we would either lose the hard drive or not be allowed to get our connection, we relented and he couldn't wipe the smug grin on his face as he said 'we are the best police force in the world, and we never let anything through' at which point I eplained (in hindsight somewhat foolishly) that he hadn't scanned either our cellphone or the medicine Jen was carrying so they couldn't be that good (or words to that effect)...and he snapped...he grabbed my passport and bundled me into a room (leaving Jen in the corridor) and told me to take my cap off (bizarrely enough...at this point I thought I was about to hear the twang of rubber gloves being put on) and sit down. He then proceeded to shout at me in Spanish for about 5 minutes the gist of which was 'I am God, you do what I say, I can make you miss your flight, I'm still having pshychosexual problems due to my incredibly small member, and thus feel the need to shout and bawl at members of the public' that kinda thing. I then tried to explain why I had kicked up a fuss and he would only let me do thisin Spanish. Oh how hilarious it would have been for an outsider to hear me going on about 'el hard-drive a corrupto, kaput' that kind of thing. At one point I swear I managed to use 4 languages in one sentence ('Je suis mas fatigue, me hard-drive es kaput'). Eventually he let me go, without any internal examination I hasten to add, and we were on our way. Jen mumbled somethign about police brutality and we should complain, I thought better of it, and decided descretion and all that...and kept me head down until the connection to Barcelona. From Barca we had a 6 hour wait at their incredibly scruffy airport. We couldn't decide what the issue was, as there was srcaps of newspaper allover the floor, everywhere. Either someone had strong feelings about the press, or it was some kind of bizarre new Xmas decoration. The fcat of the matter was though that the cleaners were on strike and had obviously come in late at night and covered the floor with the news.

So eventually, after some 28 hours traveling, we made it back to East Midlands airport (via BMIBABY who were excellent) to be greeted by Lynn, Richard, and Rachel - a welcome sight. As we made it to the car it was clear one other special person had come to see us - OSCAR! I opened the boot of the car and he jumped on me, seemingly having saved a years worth of licks. He seemed to remember us (good start) and came and sat at our feet when we sat in the lounge last night.

We have had the best nights sleep for ages, no noisy neighbours, no worrying about stuff going missing, no having to get up to check out...and I slept through until midday (!) and had the best tastign bacon and egg sandwich I have ever had for lunch. Our plan is to sort stuff out here in Nottingham (we have sent an incredible amount of stuff back - at least 11/12 boxes) and then head over to Glosspo for a few days before coming back to Nottingham for Xmas day. We fly to Barca to meet up with my mum and step-dad (and brother and Rachel & Sandeep, but we're seeing them in England first) on boxing day. They arrive on 28th...here's hoping the cops in Barca are better (endowed?) than Madrid...