Doune, United Kingdom

So as fate would have it we do not wake up before the alarm – every morning so far I was awake before 5. Not this morning – I want to cry when the alarm goes off. And it is raining outside. And light already. We grab the last things, stuff them into suitcases that cannot close and plastic bags that threaten to tear the minute we are out the door. Of course Mr. Wise bought a top hat. Paid too much for it – and now I have to schlep it with me for the next two weeks. Why o why…? It is bright, broad daylight at 5h45 when we stumble to the underground. Some people are only coming back home at this hour – clearly having had a very long and good night out. Everything works according to plan – well, sort of. We get to Liverpool Street station on time, and take the express train to Stansted. We arrive in good time and ask advice from a young man with pants that are too tight and a three day old beard that is very carefully cultivated. He tells us to stand in a specific line, which we duly do. We wait. And we wait. The line does not move. Eventually we realise that we are in the wrong queue – this one is for people who already have boarding passes. By now I realise that we are in the wrong line, and that time is running out. We ask someone else who tell us that we are in the wrong queue. We now join another line where people are really upset – some screaming, crying, having fights with partners. Mothers with small children are walking away from angry husbands. This is like Dante’s inferno – we are not the only ones who have not read the small print on the website. A woman with hair tight back so tight that she could hardly blink her eyes are on crowd control duty. She has a shrill, shrieking voice in which she screams at the crowd, telling them constantly that she is only one person. Flights have been missed, connecting flights gone, and people are really getting more and more angry. We wait. Deep breaths. It is now clear that Rynair is in total chaos. Eventually the one with the tight hair calls those flying to Edinburgh – we huddle like scared sheep not knowing what our fate will be. We are told to go to a counter where the attendant is even more flustered than the wannabe passengers. She tells us to just stand back, she cannot concentrate with us in front of her. She is confused. She does not know what she is doing. The tight hair tells her to get with it. Electricity between the two *****es. People are trying to jump the queue, others trying to get the attention of tight hair who is not pale in the face, with red blotches flaming up her neck. Eyes watery because she cannot blink. And then the good news: because we did not check in online, we need to pay another 90 pounds each, That is exactly double the price of our tickets. By this time, we are so irate and thinking that we are now too late for our flight. A young man next to us missed his flight and has to buy a new ticket. He does not have the money to do so – my heart breaks for him. The *****es behind the counter tell he to move away from the counter – his pleading is not going to help. Boarding pass in hand, we make a runner for the gate. At the security gates there is another major pile up. Boots (bike lace up hiking boots) must come off, belt, everything through the scanner. Of course my bag is stopped and searched. Ipad not allowed, so back through the scanner. Each item must go in a seperate container. And then we run again – backpack, camera, bloody tophat do not make for sprinting! The path to the gates wind through a shopping mall the size of Canal Walk, with hundreds of tourists meandering at a leisurely pace browsing through the passages. We run as if our lives depend on it. (Well more like someone at Ryanair’s life depended on it!) By this time I am swearing, sweating and can hardly breath. It feels as if it is mile away! And when we get to the gate, the flight is delayed. And not for us I would have you know. Can this day get any worse? Eventually we get on the stupid plane and I am ready to hit someone very hard. In Edinburgh we decide to go into the city and have breakfast. It is now raining. High summer in Scotland. We have a reasonably decent breakfast at the train station and take a walk down Princes Street when we see an exhibition of Impressionist paintings and decide to pop in (out of the rain). Daubigny, Van Gogh, Monet. Just what my soul needed – I decide there and then I need a sketchpad, pencils and some pastels, which Victor buys me as a graduation gift. At the closing down sale of BHS we buy two fleecy blankets, knowing that we are going to freeze our asses off. Now we need to take a train to Uphall, an industrial park outside of Edinburgh where we need to pick up the Motorhome. In all the chaos the handle that I use to pull my suitcase broke. So now I have to drag the suitcase with one arm of the handle. Of course it insists going in a different direction to which I am going, bumping into other people or going in front of my legs making me trip over my own suitcase. Like a spastic half drunk person I walk after the suitcase instead of pulling the suitcase behind me. We are told to go to gate 13. At gate 13 a red headed Scotsman (who else) tells us that our train leaves from platform 10 (in 7 minutes), which is on the other side of the station. Across a bridge. The escalator is out of order. We take the lift, waddling with suitcase that has a total mind of its own, across the bridge, down the other side. No says the lady in a the green official jacket, we leave from platform 13. I do not use the P word as I am very tempted to do for the 40th time today, but turn around, fall over my suitcase and straddle off to platform 13 again. Over the bridge, down the lift, across the wobbly sidewalk where my suitcase does a sort of Elvis style shake rattle role dance, back to Platform 13. The same man is there. He looks us up and down, points at the board and insists that we are leaving from Platform 10. I will end the blog here for today…