• Feeling: Thrown off balance
• Listening to: Can’t remember
• Watching: No idea

Yesterday (Friday) I didn’t write a post – I think just the second time I’ve missed a day since March 22nd. Yesterday was a slightly odd day altogether, and rather stressful and tiring at the end – hence not managing to write a post. So here is Friday’s post, a day late…

Friday morning I got up in time to walk B to the bus stop (just) and bumped into a friend who’s son goes to the same school – we chatted for about 30 minutes (having not seen him face-to-face for almost 6 months) before I had to head back home to take F to school while D went off to work.

That left me at home all by myself for the whole day (at least until 3pm when I had to go pick up F), which felt quite odd and was very quiet. I had work to occupy me and again after a six month gap, it was basically the first “normal” work day I’ve had. Because I work at home by myself, unlike the kids going to school or D going into work – as soon as I’m by myself at home its “back to normal” – I haven’t got any adjustments to make, or new rules to get used to, or one-way systems to observe, or other people to worry about – I’m just sitting back at my computer getting on with stuff.

After I’d fetched F, she did some Minecraft while I had another call 4pm-5pm during which time D and B both got home. This was the point at which the day got stressful – D’s Dad was flying home from India yesterday, and was meant to get to Manchester airport (flying out of Mumbai and transferring in Frankfurt) at around 10am yesterday morning. At 4pm we found out from D’s brother that he’d not arrived. D’s brother had spent most of the day at Manchester airport trying to find out what had happened with no luck. We immediately rang the airline, but got the same answer as D’s brother – they couldn’t tell us whether their Dad had got the flights because of data protection. We also range the airport but they were unable to tell us anything (in this case because they didn’t have any information rather than having information they wouldn’t tell us).

Since the obvious sources of information either couldn’t, or wouldn’t tell us what they knew, we decided the only option was to phone the police – using the “101” non-emergency number. It took at least half an hour to get our call answered (no queuing system or information – just rang and rang and then went dead – and you had to start again – not great), but once we were through they took it seriously and started to take details. At this point D’s eldest sister rang – she’d spoken to someone (at the airline I think) and they’d confirmed that their Dad had missed the connection and was waiting in Frankfurt for the next flight to Manchester – which would get in at 11pm (over 12 hours later than the planned flight). D’s sister is obviously a lot more persuasive than me when it comes to getting people to share information!

What a relief – and around 11:30pm we got confirmation he’d landed and D’s brother had picked him up. At this point D went to bed, but I was pretty wound up by this point and needed to watch TV for a while before I calmed down and was able to go to bed – by which point I was too tired to write anything – hence this is a day late.

Stay safe, stay strong