Nearly all packed, then, and anticipating my pickup for the Business Aviation Centre, (which at the time of starting this post has just been delayed for 30 hours until early Thursday morning.) Yes, I am one of those Private Jet Hire people.

It’s not an option I would ever have dreamed of taking but one I’m increasingly glad I settled on, especially after reading this heart-rending post on a Hong Kong  Facebook Group last week:

Oscar, at 32kgs, is too big to travel in the cabin or as excess baggage of a scheduled flight, assuming there were any spaces that weren’t currently being cancelled at the drop of a hat. Our options were either to take him now in the cabin of a private jet or wait for him to die. We thought around Christmas that this problem might solve itself but here he is, just short of his 14th birthday and post major surgery, a little stiff and weak but as spirited and waggy as ever.

Let’s get the beef out of the way first, shall we? I’ve heard of some  people who pronounce loudly that the cost of a private jet, indeed of any form of international transportation for mere pets is a waste of money and would be better spent on, I don’t know, feeding people in poverty or contributing to world peace or whatever. I acknowledge that there is probably something in this if you consider a pet as a disposable luxury rather than a sentient creature completely dependent on their family for their wellbeing. We all have our priorities, I suppose. If I’d handed over this amount of cash to one of these people to spend as they pleased and abandoned my old dogs, members of my family, in a shelter here, maybe our misery would have made them happier. I don’t know. (14 hours in a little plane with a dozen assorted cats and dogs is going to be far from glamorous, at any rate.) We are relatively lucky to have the choice not to do so and perhaps this is what rankles these people, at least a bit.

When I was upset and apprehensive at the thought of leaving home to come here, lots of people told me that I’d love it: it’s such as great, exciting, vibrant place. I’m sure that part of the attraction is the low tax rate and the fact that a middle class family can have their childcare, dog care, household chores and cooking done for them by a Foreign Domestic Helper.

I’m not really the sort of person who spends their days sipping G and Ts at an expat club, never have been, which seems to be a commonly-held perception and might have been more accurate in past times and, with my empty nest I no longer have a ready-made network of schoolmum friends. Competitive mummery horrifies me anyway: I had almost 20 years of it in the U.K. and Paris and though I was incredibly relived to be shot of all that stuff it was always going to be difficult to make new friends here. Singing in the choirs became my treasured little bit of a social life, but we’ve scarcely been able to do that at all in the last two years. Nonetheless I’ll miss my choir friends and the little Twitter/WhatsApp group too.

My heart is absolutely in pieces at the prospect of Oscar and Raffles waking at home on Friday morning to the realisation that their beloved MsJ is no longer with them. I have agonised about this through every night for weeks and I can seriously anticipate that Oscar will be heartbroken.

I’ll miss her so much too but as my long-lost-now-refound and hugely treasured friend Alison points out, things aren’t the same as they were 33 years ago. We don’t have to worry about getting around to writing and posting a letter; the long-distance phone call is no longer a daunting prospect when we have Skype and we can choose from myriad messaging apps to drop a quick line when they’re in our thoughts. Still, saying goodbye was never going to be easy.

I have had odd pangs of melancholy when walking through this hitherto fast and shiny city to say goodbye to it. Buildings and views that were run-of-the-mill on the walk from my singing lesson every couple of weeks have now become marinated with sentimental meaning as I take my leave of them. The last time view of the Star Ferry; the walk through the IFC and the last time through Pier No 3 that I first traversed almost four years ago. The last DB ferry ride. The last time up those 86 ruddy steps from the beach promenade to our street level. I’m sad about it in a way I never imagined. I once longed to go home, and now I’m filled with regret at parting.

Of course the Hong Kong that greeted us when we arrived was very, very different from today’s city, bruised and battered by memories of the 2019 protests and the Zero Covid isolation that seems to have made us the worst of all worlds. Restaurants and shops we frequented are on their knees or have already closed. Though the streets are no longer as empty as they were for months, the days when going out meant playing human dodgems are gone. A heavy blanket of uncertainty seems to weigh everyone down. I don’t know if there is a way back from this for the ordinary people of Hong Kong. I hope so.