Ian's on his way home

The problem was - how to get Ian to Manchester Airport. I contemplated taking Tuesday off as well as Monday. Except at 10:00 I had my annual goals and objectives setting meeting with Peter and that had already been rescheduled three times. I didn't think he'd be very happy if I randomly rescheduled it again.

We decided that I would take the Vixen into town a little later than The Builder leaves, park in the Cheesegrater (where I have a discount card for daily parking), deposit Ian in the Adsetts Centre and then escort him to the station to take a train to Manchester, with perhaps a little lunch first.

That would have worked quite well. Except that it meant that Monday evening was going to be uncomfortably busy for Ian, what with feasting, putting together a submission for some funding and then trying to pack a house worth of stuff into two suitcases.

So Plan B. Ian defers the packing to Tuesday morning, takes a taxi to the Chesterfield station, a train to Sheffield, then I meet him at the station for a small spot of lunch before he trundles to Manchester and I go back to work. Taxi to be called for half an hour before the train.

Sorted.

Except that I began to worry that if the taxi turned up late and there was lots of traffic and there was a long queue at the station, then Ian would miss his train. Allow 45 minutes.

So he did. And the taxi turned up on time, there was no traffic and no queue at the ticket office. Ian caught the train before the one he was intending to catch. So I took a very early lunch (having had a successful goals and objectives setting meeting with Peter earlier in the morning). But can anyone tell me why we decided to go to Burger King when we could just as easily have gone to Upper Crust or one of the coffee shops and had a pricey but proper sandwich and some real coffee? The Burger King steak sandwich was perfectly pleasant – but it didn’t half astonish my digestive system which doesn’t expect to be fed quite so much fat, sugar and salt in one sitting!!

Ian caught his train, made his way to Manchester, checked in (alas, no First Class upgrade, which he had asked to exchange his Frequent Flier points for, but also no excess baggage charges) and settled in to wait for his flight. I went back to the office.

I am happy to report that Ian got his upgrade when he got to Heathrow and checked onto his flight to Melbourne. He’s now flapping his wings good and hard on his way back home.
In the meantime, I got up this morning, rocked around and got everything ready for the day.

Hopped in to Oscar as The Builder was leaving for work, as is my normal practice. Got a few yards up the road and The Builder asked if it didn’t happen to be Wednesday. It is Wednesday, although I had been proceeding in a Tuesday kind of way. If it’s Wednesday, I should be in the Vixen and taking myself into Sheffield. It’s Japanese day! I got out of Oscar, went home again, grabbed the car keys and brought myself in. Just as well The Builder thought of it. It would have been something of a challenge getting home from Broomhill at 9pm!

Time to dig out the autumn gloves and a light scarf. It was quite nippy this morning (though beautifully sunny :-) )