And so it is time for the suitcase to have its virgin flight. These next few days it will lay on the sofa bed, open, ready and waiting. It will become home to dresses, shorts, beach towel and swimwear. Toiletries, shoes, underwear etc will be neatly arranged. Space will be filled to the maximum benefit. Then it will be zipped up, weighed and labeled - destination Skyros, Greece.
On its journey it will be manhandled, tossed about and loaded into the plane's hold with hundreds of other similarly filled cases. It will encircle the luggage conveyor belt and be wheeled out of Athens airport for onward transit by taxi, coach and ferry to it destination in a small hillside village on the island of Skyros.
We live such luxury lives, us holidaymakers, when, in comparison, refugees are fleeing their homelands in only the clothes they stand up in with very few or no possessions.
For us we spend a week or two in a foreign land welcomed for our financial presence but for them a lifetime of poverty, striving, being verbally abused and buffeted about, being looked down on, judged, hated even, every day. They will be desperate to 'fit in', to make a better life, to live without fear of being shot, without the sound of gunfire every day.
I am grateful to God my life is as it is and this life path has already been ordained for me. My fears of travelling alone are but nothing compared to immigrants at sea in overcrowded boats, in the back of container lorries and scaling fences in Calais to enter the Chunnel in a bid to come to England. The promised land of milk and honey - but will it be?
Will Skyros be all I anticipate? Let's go and find out, I'll be back soon.
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