Well I am having a wee sulk in bed this morning, I should of course be doing something useful, but I am recovering somewhat from rather an epic trip to a clinic in Scotland - which took on huge proportions in terms of my usual travel mayhem. Trying to leave on Wednesday morning after rising at 5.30 was not without my usual layers of fuss. A salty old sea dog friend of mine was on standby as a drop in Mrs Doubtfire - a friendly face in case my daughter had any problems getting off to school which she did not. Another neighbour ready to take my son for part of the day if too ill for school, which he was... and typed instructions in bold for my husband regarding what everybody was doing - he ignored all of these and phoned me every 15 minutes or texted me.. but I had given all the instructions to the children and paid them not only to look after each other, but also to babysit Dad and de muddle anything, and also inform me of any naughtiness which I might want to write about.
He was great, we drove through thick thick fog in East Anglia, and arrived with one minute to spare to stick myself on the airport bus to Stansted from nearest large town. I arrived for the flight with nearly four hours to spare.. it was the only way to do this, to fit around my son being with dad some of the day and for him to be able to contain all the clients he chases after using his integrated appointments system with computer and phone... which I call 'the crystal ball'. The clients regularly appear at unexpected times and in the wrong locations. So my carefully laid fuss, did work. All went well.
Once installed at the airport, I had a bucket of coffee and rather a nice brunch and then made friends with the local rip off internet - and talked to people including the children for quite some time, via their various devices for Facebook. I felt fairly organized with my printed out boarding passes and addresses and started to feel very excited about re connecting with a friend who I last stayed with in Scotland 19 years ago. I knew we would start where we left off.
My arrival at Glasgow... was a slap in the face with the weather, I was greeted by sideways intensely driven torrential rain, which played havoc with my trying-to-not-look-like-a-lady-who-had-let-herself-go-and-had-gone-all-at-once-appearance-etc. Any plans I had for gliding around the city centre effortlessly doing Christmas shopping freed up from any responsibility, went out of the window immediately. My phone rang straight away, I knew it was my friend and I announced that the eagle had landed etc.
I could not get in a taxi fast enough. However I may have ruined anglo scots relations and caused a bigger divide between north and south. The driver was in a foul mood and drove very badly...as we arrived at an address which he informed me did not exist, so basically dropped me at a local land mark, which was doubling at that moment as a wind tunnel..he nudged the clock up as I got out.. my response was to sweetly inform him that the two quid he had ripped me off was cheaper than the five quid tip I had planned... so I was treated to full range of choice glaswegian expletives which I found most fascinating, I do always like to immerse myself in local cultures straight away. My friend came to rescue me... not hard locate me really, and i was wearing a bright red fur coat and clutching some terrible bags, full of things which I lost every few minutes for the remainder of the stay.
Having arrived at her lovely house, the pair of us shrieked with laughter, and occasionally her man did get a word in as we ate our own body weight in crisps and tested various wines. A very nice evening and off I went to bed, and awoke at 12 midday after the most epic sleep ever... having floated around the place a little, I was brought to my senses quite quickly when I received a text off the clinic to say they were expecting me at 2 pm, when I had written 3 pm down... so my train ride through yet more torrents of water was exchanged for another glaswegian taxi driver... who although not as bad tempered as his predecessor, announced two minutes into the journey that where I was going did not exist as an area or a road etc. He insisted on having the paper with the address on.... and then said that he could not understand it, I then snatched it back, no easy feat as his tattooed forearms appeared larger than my legs etc. At this point I offered him the post code - his reply, what do you think I am... a fecking postman! I realized after this heated exchange where my own hissing expletives made an entrance that this guy could not read or write and was probably dyslexic. We had a slight wrestling match with his map.. and we continued to drive around in mutually swearing circles.for around ten minutes until he gleefully announced he had found it, and had always knew it was there. So I arrived in a cloud of fuss, and parted on good terms with the taxi driver, I told him it was the most entertaining ride I had had in a taxi outside of Eastern Europe... we both laughed and my hand was shaken in a vice like grip. I was still wringing my hands as I lurched through the double doors and into the clinic.
The surgery was great, the doctor was informative and cool, and very up on autoimmune problems in general. I shall be starting LDN shortly. I guess it will be after Christmas, but a new chapter for me, approached with some i careful monitoring but I think some useful team work will go on.
My fab man met me at the airport last night and took me out to dinner on the way home..we had a lovely time, but today we have cancelled our Christmas get together in our house, as I am too ill from the travelling.. however I don't like the word cancel... postpone is better - a party in January when everybody has finished having them and has the January blues, I shall be making the party bigger! A full on musical event.
The worst thing I did on this trip, apart from my friend's crisp supply and three glasses of wine... was to tear up the wrong boarding pass just before I was due to board.the flight home. .. Luckily as they had already seen it, I was let off the hook, and in fact I looked so unwell I was manhandled onto the aircraft and given an upgraded seat at the front... much better than their rival air company, who shall remain nameless, but infuriated me so much after a newsworthy item with possible charging for toilet facilities - that I wrote a letter informing the owner that I would be purchasing collapsing buckets for my flight to Poland and would have no qualms about using them in the aisles - I never did get a reply!
Mary F x
xx
A VERY BIG THANKYOU !!!
