The Big Pack

I hate packing. I really do. For a traveller, it's what we biologists would term an "disadvantageous evolutionary trait" i.e. not very helpful when it comes to surviving the task ahead. In my experience packing is one of those awful prospects that mysteriously takes up the exact amount of spare time you have, leaving nothing for any other tasks you may desire to accomplish... if I have all day to pack, I WILL need all day to pack. Hence my previous tactic to cope was always to leave it until the last minute (housemates and teammates will testify to this on the Brazil trip last year).

In an effort to appear grown-up and organised, if only to my mother, I approached the situation from a different angle this time around. I have devised a new stage in preparing for a trip, called "pre-packing". This is basically a preparatory stage, where most of the major decisions are made about what you need, what you want and what you can in reality lift once your bag is packed. All clothes are spread out over parents large bed and anything potentially useful dumped on top of them, and then the whole is sifted through with a backpacker mentality. "Do I really need this?" is an essential question to be asked of each and every item. Mostly the answer is yes, so the process needs to be repeated a few times until desperation brings out my ruthless side. NO, NO, NO!!!

Once this is done, I can then enter into that most dreaded of times - packing. Please note that however much the pre-packing phase sounds like packing, there are subtle differences that must be maintained for my sanity. Otherwise that would mean I had spent ALL day packing, and I quite possibly couldn't cope!!!