Check-In.

TD jnr departed today for Ethiopia; he's planning to go and see the Ethiopian wolves and, apparently, that's the only place where you can see this endangered specie. The intention is to continue Eastwards to Nepal, then back home to Roslin when he runs out of money; he will, presumably, then work until he has earned enough money to go off again on a similar trip; he has a history of this sort of escapade. On the journey he hopes to see whale sharks, mountain gorillas and tigers, and photograph them. With those interests, I guess we did something right while raising him.

As usual, he had last minute panics trying to reduce his baggage to something acceptable to the airline, he succeeded only by sweet-talking the man at the check-in into ignoring the extra kilograms in both his cargo and the hand luggage. One would have thought that, by now, he would have mastered the art of only taking what was necessary and leaving the rest behind. What did we get wrong with his education?

The actual blip is of himself stuffing his overgrown rucksack into a heavy duty poly bag to contain all the strapping. Airline regulations, otherwise known as "Elf 'n' Safety".