The Joys of Travel (or Not Being Able To).

It's Friday evening.  The Family has left The Cottage having been fed and watered.  The decks have been cleared.  The dishwasher is on.  The place is tidy.  

Martin and David are on their way to Wellington accompanied by Wendy who will share the driving and drive the car back tomorrow.  Martin and David are supposed to be setting foot in Scotland sometime on Friday UK time.  As it is they will be leaving Wellington around 0700 tomorrow for a 7 hour stopover in Sydney airport.  They will all get about 4 hours sleep tonight.

Over the last few days I've started half a dozen posts.  Then something has happened that has altered everything.  Of course if you haven't got internet then you can't publish the post immediately and other things can come along and make that which you said irrelevant or completely out of date.  This week has been very much like that.  I had no internet (other than a weak signal on my iPhone insufficient to be of use for tethering the laptop) from Wednesday afternoon until this afternoon.

Yesterday the storm raged:  the continuation of Tropical Cyclone Ida which wreaked havoc up the north coast of New South Wales before wandering out to sea again and making a nuisance of itself over here.  We got away lightly with no damage although the wind and rain was the worst I've experienced here.  Some have had severe damage and the West Coast of the South Island has had lots of damage and Christchurch has had more flooding to add to its woes.   However Martin and David’s flight to Auckland was cancelled last night because of the weather.  The knock on effect was that they were still at home when they should have been on the flight from Auckland to Scotland.  There isn’t another with the same airline until Wednesday.

However after a full evening and a full day today negotiating with the airlines and the insurance company and with the help of their travel agent, they have booked seats on another airline in the morning.  The downside is a 5 hour drive this evening in the dark down to Wellington and a return journey for Wendy tomorrow.

It made all my irritations look unimportant just as the disaster in Korea put their travel disruptions into perspective.

On the plus side yesterday I managed to get a replacement small plastic lever for the recliner chair and fit it.