Who is this strange man in my house?

No, not my husband. I knew about him, and I even see him around from time to time. 

This is an older guy who seems to think he has some sort of relationship to me... I think I recognise him. It's coming back to me... Doug? Darren? Dan? Daaaa... Dad? That's it. Dad. 

My dad is home. Aside from a couple of days over Christmas last year, I haven't really seen him since this time last year, so it's not surprising if I'm a bit hazy. Mum and I went and picked him up from the airport on Monday morning at 5-bloody-a.-sodding-m., which meant I had to get up at 4:30. AM. In the morning. But it was worth it, just to see the tender way he glared at us as we walked into the airport and saw him sitting on a bench, whereupon he grunted 'I've been waiting for twenty minutes.' I'm misting up just thinking about it. To be fair, we were running a bit late, but I figure that after a fifteen hour flight, waiting twenty minutes in the arrivals lounge is not that bad. 

We stopped at the beach on the way home, and were just in time to see the sunrise over South Curl Curl;

Maybe I need to start getting up earlier in the morning;

Then we went out for breakfast, which was nice. But it's going to be a funny period of readjustment for all of us. Dad's been away for a year, and it's going to be interesting seeing how we all learn to live together again. Added to that is the fact that my brother is due home in a month, and then my sister comes home at Christmas, so over the next couple of months it's going to get a bit crowded in here. I suppose Jo and I could move out, but I think that's more than we can really afford just at the minute. So, fingers crossed. This could be about to get messy.

Dumb luck

I haven't posted anything in a while. I've been all of a tizz-wozz, as my sainted mother would say, about leaving Pamplona. We had a lovely last couple of weeks, with visits to Vitoria and Olite, and lots of food and booze, all of which I'll get to a bit later.

Right now we're at my grandparents' house in Wokingham, and we're damn lucky to be here. Our original plan had been to drive through France and get the ferry across to England, but we thought it might be a bit iffy given the expected snow so we booked tickets to fly out of Bilbao on the 20th. In the days leading up to our departure there were two things worrying us; one, the strikes in Spanish airports, and two, the snow in England. But we crossed our fingers and figured the only thing we could do would be to turn up at the airport and hope. 

First thing we saw when we got to Bilbao airport...huge lines at the check-in desks, this at an airport with a few dozen flights each day. The staff were indeed on strike. We lined up anyway, and after about half an hour or so they started checking people in. Damn work-shy Spaniards can't even maintain the necessary energy for a proper strike. 

Then we played the waiting game. Long, tedious story short, our flight to Heathrow was cancelled. Luckily, due to a bit of a misunderstanding, we had ended up also having tickets for a later flight to Stansted which managed not only to take off, but which ended up only running about twenty minutes later than scheduled. Sitting in the airport at Bilbao we started talking to an English girl who lives just up the road from Wokingham, and we arranged to get a cab home together, rather than trying our luck on the equally unpredictable train systerm. We ended up getting home a bit after 1am, having been in the airport at Bilbao since 1pm. But we got lucky. Stansted airport was full of people waiting for flights that were, in all likelihood never going to leave. The statistic I read was that of 20,000 scheduled European flights yesterday, only 6,500 took off.

The chances were very, very good that Jo and I would still be sitting in the airport at Bilbao today, waiting for our rescheduled flight. But instead, I'm sitting, warm and full of tea in my beloved granparents' house. We had Vegemite toast for breakfast (oh, Vegemite, how I missed your salty goodness!), then I decorated the Christmas tree (by myself, because no one else was interested, but I think it came out OK)

Then we had lunch (cheddar cheese! pork pie! anyone who doubts the quality of English food is a  damn fool), and now everyone's having a post-lunch-and-gin-and-tonic snooze. So, so, happy to be here, especially considering what could have been.

I'll leave you for now with some pictures of my grandparents' garden in the snow;