Join the Nicolle family on a road trip from Irbid, Jordan, to London in a Fiat Panda. Colette was five months pregnant and their son Freddie was under two years old, which led to certain not entirely unexpected difficulties along the way, as well as significantly different priorities. The three-week journey in the heat of summer in 1984 is told through the separate, and at that time private, diaries of David and Colette Nicolle. As the diary entries are presented separately, the reader can compare these conflicting day by day stresses, and how or if they were resolved. Here we should also note that David and Colette remain happily married. Follow a range of interests from medieval art and architecture to the urgent search for disposable nappies, not to mention finding themselves unexpectedly related by marriage to French Resistance heroes. The authors also hope to reassure new or soon-to-be parents that exciting lives can continue after giving birth. The authors David was born in London in 1944. After working for BBC Television News and the BBC Arabic Service, he gained an MA at the School of Oriental and African Studies (1978) and a PhD at Edinburgh University (1982). In 1984 he was teaching Islamic Art and Architectural History at Yarmouk University, Jordan. Following that time abroad, he continues to concentrate on historical research and writing, specializing in Medieval and Middle Eastern history. Colette was born and raised in Massachusetts, and met David in London while on a working holiday. Having done her first degree at Salem State University, MA, she did her MSc at Loughborough University on their return from Jordan, and amongst other teaching jobs over the years, retired from her lecturing and research role in Inclusive Design at Loughborough University in 2015. Colette and David ‘retired’ to north London from Leicestershire in 2015. They now have two granddaughters and a newly arrived grandson. NOTE, t