Tea, anyone?

As a certain famous Scottish poet once commented, "A The best-laid plans o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley,..." For those of you not versed in Scottish prose or dialect, that would translate as "All the best-laid plans of mice and men go often astray...".

This is exactly our current situation. Having said a very fond farewell to Grand Rapids yesterday (Friday) we are currently in Boston staying with good friends of ours. The plan was to be here until Tuesday evening at which point we were scheduled to fly to Dublin, and from there to Edinburgh.

However, Fi received a phonecall yesterday from Aer Lingus informing us that there will be distrubances in Ireland from Wednesday (our day of arrival in dublin) and Friday. Disturbances?? With images of revolution in the streets of Dublin, and guiness-swigging revolters charging the ariports and local supermarkets, I asked breathlessly, and with a sense of wonder, "What KIND of disturbances?" to which the gentleman replied "Industrial". "Ooohh," thought I "an industrial revolution! How exciting! The workers of Ireland unite to fight against the evil corporations who pay them peanuts to do serve the people..etc.. etc..."

Not quite. Down, Overactive Imagination, down boy....

Basically, the airport workers in Ireland are planning a strike between Wednesday and Friday so there is a pretty good chance we'd be stuck in Dublin for three days if we stick with our original flight. This wouldn't be so bad if the exchange rate wasn't the pits and we could afford a hotel in Dublin for three nights, but that isn't the case. Alternatively we could leave a day earlier... except that the date of entry on Brian's UK visa is Feb 28, so he can't arrive in the UK any earlier than that. The lovely Aer LIngus rep also offered the fabulously unhelpful suggestion that we could take the train to Belfast and go from there to Scotland to which I asked "and would you be paying for that?" It won't take a genious to guess the answer to that one. Therefore, we've taken the airline's offer of moving our flight at no charge. We'll be in Boston until Friday and will arrive in Edinburgh on Saturday.

We are hoping that this will only bring us closer to arriving within days of our shipment of belongings. Although, I was told by North American movers today that these usually take 45 - 75 days. Originally we were told it would take 30 - 50 days. Needless to say we're hoping that the original information was accurate. There is only so much more living out of a suitcase we can take, not to mention the fact that I miss my pillow. And my duvet. And my favourite mug. You get the picture.

So here we are taking it one day at a time, with a whole week of Boston fun ahead of us. Anyone fancy a cuppa?