Planes, Trains and Automobiles (and a good night out)
Sub title: what a hell of a
24 36 hours!
Wednesday
10:30am woke up
12:00pm Went out to get yet another new tyre for my car (6th tyre in about a year, 2 punchers in about 2 months :(
13:30pm Cleaned up the flat a bit and extracted another mouse from the traps (That's 2 caught, but mysteriously one of the traps has gone missing...?!)
14:30pm Bought a paper shredder *grins*, browsed the local wine merchant, Had lunch
15:15pm Shredded the coloured envelopes I got some Christmas cards in (red and white confetti). Oh and thank you f_l_i_r_t for the Christmas card :)
15:30pm Started to work out what to pack for holidays, turned on the radio and found out that because of the weather lots of flights were being cancelled in the UK.
I was booked into 2 flights to get home on Thursday, from London Heathrow to Manchester, and from Manchester to Belfast. Both of these flights were cancelled on Wednesday. I tried phoning the British Airways help number to see what I should do, but it just rang out. By 6:30 the best I could find out was that both flights were delayed. At 7pm BA cancelled my first flight, but no information on the second. I checked out the train times to Manchester and worked out that there was a train from Reading to Manchester I could get at 10am.
7:15pm So with nothing else I could do I headed out to London...
8:30pm I arrived at the party in Pacha, London and quickly found a few friends, with in an hour I had a couple of drinks and was starting to dance a little. It was a great party, but there was a strange entertainment act, I'm not sure how to describe it, but it was three "dodgy Mexican blokes" who sang, danced, and eventually stripped down to there y-fronts, and yeah one of the guys had a costume malfunction *shudders*
By 12:30 it was getting a bit quieter, as a lot of people headed off to get the last train out of Paddington. Of course this is when I should have left to, but nope, I was having a good time with a friend from work dancing, it's been a while since I've been out dancing. At about 1am, a group of us left for another club, fools! One of the guys had ordered up a limo, a BMW 7 series, and we were chauffeured to a club in Mayfair, Pangaea. We were promised guest list access and a club dripping with celebs, vip's and models.
We did get in straight away, and the place was dripping with "totty", well lots of attractive women. We did meet a writer for the BBC Radio 4 soap, The Archers -- We're living the high life now!
The club closed at 3am and 2 of use jumped in a cab back to Paddington station and the other 2 carried on. We caught the first train of Thursday morning out.
4:45am I finally got home! I checked the departure times of the Manchester - Belfast plane, it was scheduled to be a couple of hours late, I though that would be fantastic, I can sleep in a little more and get a later train. I left the alarm clock set at 8:30 thou.
5:00am Went to bed
8:32am Woke up, staggered to the bathroom, pee'd what seemed like a couple of pints(!), showered, shivered and dried myself and checked the flight times. Feck, the flight was back on time again - 15:20. Ordered a Cab, got dressed, finished packing, sorted out the flat, turned down the heating, unplugged things etc...
9:35am Got in the cab
9:45am Got to the station, bought a ticket, bought breakfast
10:10am Got on the train
13:15pm Arrived back in Manchester Picadilly Train station, ahh old memories of the Manchester skyline...!
13:35pm Train the airport
15:50pm Boarded the plane
16:50pm Arrive in Belfast, got a taxi
17:15pm Arrive at home
Phew! I was worried I would be stranded in Manchester or spending Christmas in England. So far I've not been able to get any help from British Airways, their help line has just rung off the hook. Now I've got to work out how to claim back the cancelled flight and the costs of the train and taxi.