Packing the Chaos

• With just one week until D-Day the Packing Boxes arrived today and I had high hopes. I'd taken a day off work to focus on the task of packaging my belongings strewn over three bedroom floors into tidy, labelled boxes ready to depart to Mumbai.

• The thing is, how much exercise is one really going to do in 10 months - realistically, and therefore how much "gym kit" is needed? Can it really be that I will do as much in Mumbai in 10 months as I did in London in 20 years?

• Will I suddenly develop a passion for make-up, and need the hundreds of tubes of stuff accumulated over the years; each free makeover providing me with a list of must-haves, that I have-d mustly, but have never used again after the first flush of enthusiasm.

• I love a bit of accessorising - rings, bangles, necklaces. I never learnt the less-is-more rule, and that bling has all got to get into something to make its way across the world. And accumulatively it weighs a tonne. Mr T has nothing on me.

• My sister-in-law who has been an ex-pat all her life in many different countries and is a packing professional, has looked at my chaos and simply asked whether I needed quite so many handbags. I don't know. I've not thought about it in earnest. Perhaps I should give it some thought. Or apply some sort of algorithm, where x = bags and y = no of distinct colours of outfits?

• Don't lets get started on shoes. The shoe situation can only be classed as a crisis. Its the weather, and the terrain, and work versus play, and going out, and staying in, and the rainy season, and what if I go somewhere else that needs other types of shoes? My husband has his On shoes ready to put in his suitcase.

• How cold does 20 degrees at night feel if it has been 32 degrees in the day time? Is that a cardigan? Or just a wrap? And what if the air con is up really high, like the freezer section of Sainsburys then do I need a jacket at work? I don't have one magic jacket that goes with everything so several jackets?

• I'm going to the cinema instead. Hamnett at the Brixton Ritzy. I'll deal with packing tomorrow if it hasn't sorted itself out.