I don’t even know where to begin. I’m in Sweden now, but getting here was quite the ordeal. I guess I should do it chronologically. It all started on Friday afternoon when I looked for trains to Kev’s. I was gonna spend the weekend there before I went to Sweden. And I realise that since it’s been raining so hard the tracks between Greenock and Glasgow are flooded and there’s no trains running. I was quite at loss of what to do when my team leader offered to take me into Paisley, from where I would be able to get the train to Glasgow and then onwards. I thankfully accept and by 4pm we are on the road. So far so good, but not for long. When we get into Greenock town we realise that everything is at a standstill, a horrible, fuming, honking standstill of angry and tired drivers. We are stuck in this mess for about half an hour, leaving out total travel time so far at two hours, before we decided to try and get a different route. Only problem is getting to this route. Every street is filled with cars and everyone is too tired and frustrated to be polite, so it’s a nightmare every time we need to take a turn onto a different street. Eventually we get to the roar we’re going to and see that, like a big long, lazy catepillar, it’s moving very slowly forward, up and down the hills. We hang in there and move about a mile an hour and both me and my team leader is beginning to think that maybe we should have stayed on the dual carriageway. Maybe that had cleared up now and we were stupidos for turning off. At about quarter to 6 I call Kevin and tell him I’m going to be late. About 10 minutes later he calls me up and ask which road we’re on, since the dual carriageway is completely closed off due to flooding.
Whew, relief! It seems the road we’re on is clear, it’s just the sheer amount of cars and rain that’s making it go slowly, but it’s moving forward. We’re crawling though the outskirts of Greenock, slowly but surely, and true enough, eventually it clears up. A journey that normally takes me an hour and a half took me closer to five hours. I was exhausted when I finally sat down at the dinner table and had some long awaited food. In fact I almost fell asleep while eating. I was so glad the whole ordeal was over. For a while there I was really worried and almost certain we wouldn’t actually get out of Greenock until after the trains had stopped running.
But the rest of the weekend was really nice. On Saturday evening we had some fizzy wine and cake and then I had the best surprise ever. Kev’s mum snuck up the stairs and I didn’t think much of it, but then she came down with a whole pile of presents! I was so surprised and moved and I had just not expected that at all. 2 of them was from His parents and 2 of them were from Kev. I wes baffled, I didn’t know what to say at all and it was just so nice. <3 The fact that I was completely taken by surprise was probably the best thing about it.
So that was really lovely, and I almost didn’t want to leave on the Sunday. But we got up at 9am, which is so much earlier than we usually get up during the weekend, so it was a bit of a struggle, but we managed. Got a taxi down to the bus station and then we didn’t find the stop my bus would arrive at, so we just stood at a random one and waited. It was running a bit late, so we got a bit worried, but eventually it turned up and I got on. I was almost falling asleep the whole way to the airport, but since I didn’t know exactly which stop was mine, I didn’t want to risk it. Somehow I managed to stay asleep, get through the security, eat my sandwiches and queue for ages to finally get on the palne. As usual with Ryanair it was cramped and a bit cold, but I fell asleep pretty instantly and dreamt about weird things, none of which I remember now.
It was great to see mum and dad again. It’s nice to be home and Christmas is finally starting to feel like it might be on Wednesday.
