Getting ready to jump the final hurdle

ONE OF my last days of providing summer holiday kid cover sent me reeling .... again.

Amazingly, this reaction was nothing to do with the behaviour of the children, or the fact that I still had so much new uniform to buy. It was due to me taking a call from our emigration consultants saying the time was high to trip trap along to get our police checks and medical check-ups under our belts. This, it seems, is the final hurdle to us obtaining (or not) our Australian permanent residency visas.

Subject to passing these final two tests with flying colours depends entirely on how we have conducted ourselves and whether we've ate enough of the good stuff over the past 30-odd years. We now have to be risk assessed by a doctor at Wrexham's private hospital and an officer or two at North Wales Police. If there's a hint of a shadow of a doubt .... we're going NOWHERE.

Can't say I'm enamoured at the prospect of being poked, prodded and X-rayed to prove I'm fighting fit and of sound mind (!!!) to take on the Aussies! And although I do claim to be one of life's law abiding citizens, I do hold a few speedy-related offences. My right foot just aint as agile at coming off the gas as it used to be.

With any luck, my minor speeding offences will be overlooked, as will my husband's late-1980s charge of being drunk and disorderly with the theft of a 50-pence beer glass. This, he got, for standing outside a local pub on a summer's night with a half drunk pint.

Being sent off by our boys in blue to spend a night in the cells is laughable to us now and he does see the funny side of it but I hope his long-term squeaky clean record is the one that will outshine any others.