Home Sweet Home

I visited England this weekend for what seemed like 24 hours, but what was in reality all weekend.

I also lived through quite a horrendous airport experience, although thankfully without any terrorist links. I arrived in Roissy on Friday at 6.45pm, all ready to check in to my bmibaby flight to East Midlands at 7.25pm - cutting it a little fine I'll admit, but that was mainly due to the wasted 15 minutes spent at the now non-existent bus stop to get from terminal to terminal, it's now the CDGVAL and very nice it is too - and I was greeted with a huge long queue of people waiting to check into the same flight. Now, I know that Roissy is not famous for its lightening check-in times, but there was practically a whole aeroplane full of people waiting.

It turned out that the reason was a THREE HOUR DELAY! I think I've never in my life been delayed three hours for a plane. Perhaps once in winter when the plane was re-routed to Birmingham due to snow, but at least that wasn't all in one go. So, making the best of a bad lot I took Glamour magazine and the Guardian and settled down to a nice Italian salad in one of the airport restaurants. I think the staff of Roissy must all be middle-aged English women but the temperature in there was below freezing for sure. Thankfully again I hadn't put my case in the hold, so I layered on all the tops I had in there to prevent the icy air-con from giving me pneumonia on June 22nd.

Finally we landed in East Midlands at around 11.30pm, three hours later than scheduled, and I was exhausted. A 90 minute drive up the motorway with mum, dad and grandma took the final wind out of my sails (and theirs too quite probably), but it was all worth it when I saw the gorgeous smiling face of my little niece Chloe the next morning.

All this, and I haven't even mentioned the Mumblers Fête de la Musique performance; watch this space.