When I think about it, there were always going to be things that would go wrong leading up to this incredibly exciting and carefree point in time, but what neither of us had anticipated was that it would be our perception of these things at the point of which they occurred that would actually dictate their severity.

Those things started literally two hours before we left home for the airport when Ronnie broke a tooth eating popcorn, of all things! This lead to a somewhat fraught period of time trying to get an emergency dental appointment whilst trying to finish packing, lock up the house and above all, remain calm. Our initial panic very quickly subsided and we both came to the conclusion that as the offending and now, very broken tooth, was not giving Ronnie any jip, we would continue as planned and make the dentist our first port of call upon touchdown in Auckland. We had had our near disaster and moment of panic, surely nothing else could go wrong so we very quickly settled back into the excitement of the journey, that was until we made our second transfer stop in Sydney.

We had left the relative luxury of the 'three' Quantas seats we had taken ownership of whilst covering backbreaking part of our journey and were in the transfer queue eagerly waiting to be processed by customs and permitted to board the two hour Emirates flight to New Zealand, when we were approached by another passenger. He enquired after our seat numbers on the last plane before dropping the bombshell that he had found not one, but two pairs of glasses on our seats and had handed them to a member of the Quantas crew.

What followed was, for me, a sense of blind panic, how had I managed to leave both pairs of brand new glasses on the plane? All manner of things went through my ming; my eyes would surely not cope, I could potentially, suffer some long term damage through this mishap. At this point Ronnie took charge of the situation and before I knew it we were running through the airport retracing our recent steps, in hot pursuit of a rather large unmissable jumbo jet, but it was useless, the surrounding area was locked up and any trace of staff, or indeed people of any kind, had vanished.

I then spent the rest of our 2 hour touchdown in Sydney pursuing any member of staff in a Quantas uniform, who kindly contacted any department who they thought might have taken receipt of my precious glasses.

This was sadly, to no avail, nothing more could be done so Ronnie and I boarded our next flight; me in a state of mild panic, fearing that I might never clearly see the wonders about to be bestowed upon us and poor Ronnie who was by now wondering who on earth his girlfriend had turned into after witnessing her run around the airport like a half blind woman possessed by something quite sinister.

Enough was enough by this point and all we wanted to do was land without further mishaps, after all, our patience with one another had been tested, we just needed to rest. So we landed in Auckland and made our way out of the airport to be greeted by a beautiful day and brilliant sunshine. Nothing could now affect us at the sight of sunshine in December. As we left the airport Ronnie reached into his bag to take out his sunglasses, but as luck would have it, the journey had taken its toll on his favourite shades and he pulled them out of his bag in two halves. There was a silent pause for a moment, but at this point in our journey nothing cracked, lost or broken could dampen our spirits!