The other minor issue was our car. The battery was so dead that even the central locking wouldn’t function. Another benefit of having the hire car was that we could use it to jump start our car and run some life back in to the battery.
Emma no longer fits in the car seat we had before going to Norway so this was something else we had to fix whilst we had the hire car and seat. What we had forgotten is that Mothercare insist on trying the seat in your car so I had to return alone the following day with our car. Fortunately our short seat belts would just fit round the Britax 1-2-3 Evolva we had picked the previous day. We have no elusion that it will actually survive until Emma is 12 years old – we’ll settle for 5 or so years though.
Returning to Southampton gave me the chance to spot one of the few changes that seem to have taken place whilst we were away – the massive IKEA building under construction behind West Quay. What I don’t understand is how I failed to notice it the day before!