Ambrosia and nectar

Up on Mount Olympus those pesky classical gods ate ambrosia and drank nectar. Now, if you're anything like me you'll be imagining Artemis getting handy with the tin opener and heating up some creamed rice for Zeus. It's not clear to we mortals what ambrosia and nectar actually are but for me, right now, it wouldn't be Greek food. Now, don't get me wrong, any cuisine that suggests fried cheese as a starter (saganaki) is a winner in my books. It's just, after three weeks of eating Greek food I'm somewhat concerned that every time I enter a room someone will inquire: 'is it me or can you smell houmous?'

However, today is a day free of Greek food as I'm sat in my local park letting Evan act irresponsibly whilst I blog. Yesterday's airport standby led to an impromptu trip to Gatwick. Then, to my eternal gratitude, my Dad paid for a BA flight to Manchester for Evan and I rather than us having to do the Gatwick Express > London Underground > Leeds by train trip. 45 minutes and a complimentary red wine later I arrived (faintly squiffy) in Manchester. Home was a mere 42 miles away.

Back in Leeds I actually walked round my house saying hello to rooms and fondled the soft furnishings. I prioritised checking that Sky+ had the full complement of 'Doctor Who' logged and I enjoyed the feeling of being home. It's taken about 24 hours and 7 washing machine loads to feel that I'm no longer in transit. That I've arrived.

And for lunch I had my very own ambrosia and nectar:



Spaghetti hoops, cheese on toast and brown sauce washed down with instant coffee. Heaven.


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Location:Manston Gardens,Leeds,United Kingdom

Under an English sky

Ooh look. That's my front room!






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Location:Manston Grove,Leeds,United Kingdom

Ooh look

Guess where we are?




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Location:Timberham Farm Rd,Crawley,United Kingdom

Us and them

Sitting at Heraklion airport you learn about the 'us and them' mentality. I'm one of the 'them' who is sat on a case trying to look like I deserve to go home. The exclusive 'us' club are the few, the happy few who have booked tickets for today's Gatwick flight. Here they are. Smug so and so's.






I reckon they've all gone into the departure lounge where nymphs hand them peeled grapes whilst they recline on golden sedan chairs. Whilst we sit in the check-in hall on our over crammed suitcases and have bricks thrown at us (ok, I'm exaggerating for comic effect. Some of us are stood up).

There is a new game amongst the stranded community. It's called 'I'm more stranded than you Top Trumps'. In it you prove that you are waaay more stranded than other people. We have a pretty strong hand in that we have been stranded a week already, are not booked onto another flight for a week, and crucially have a 7 year old kid and 2 pensioners. Any people whose first cancelled flight was Tuesday have way fewer points than us unless they have the trump card of either a little baby or a wheelchair bound Granny. If she has a drip? Game over.

We British standby types are horrified to see that there is No Queue here. We're totally lost without it. We are milling in clumps of people and cracking jokes. But if we could only stand in an actual queue where we could see that he is going before me, but they are going we'd all be much happier.

Yamas!

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Mustn't grumble

The Phoney War continues; there are flights coming and going in the skies above Crete but tickets cannot be obtained for them. A story which is probably not being reported on UK news is that the overland route is now no longer available through Greece as Piraeus harbour is full of high speed ferries and cruise ships that could take travellers home. The only problem is that the dockers have gone on strike and you can't board the ferries. Ace.

Today has been a very quiet day and one where I've had to consider the true meaning of 'stranded'. There were no flights today so we went to the Milatos cave. Here, in 1823, up to 2,700 Greek men, women and children hid from the Ottoman Turk overlords during an uprising. The cave is in a remote bay, up a precipitous mountain road that even the goats see as a mite hairy to negotiate. The cave itself is extremely low and very deep. In this cave the Cretans hid until discovered by the Turks and besieged. Finally, the captives were offered safe passage by the Turkish officer in charge. On surrendering the Cretans were massacred or sold into slavery. A chapel built into the cave entrance stands testament to the struggle and the visible bones of the slaughtered in the ossuary gives one a chilling understanding of exactly what truly being unable to escape is.

I'm trying to learn to be more calm about the situation. I cannot get myself home any more quickly by stressing. My kids are being taught by my colleagues who are probably better teachers than I. If I could get home today I would. But I can't. I learnt a valuable lesson from the Taverna by the sea at which I ate my lunch. The name?






Whilst my northern European soul thinks it's my duty to endlessly recriminate to myself about the way I'm wantonly failing to do my duties, the southern European surroundings are trying to teach me to sit tight, calm down and not to stress about things that I cannot change. This holiday I've learnt about the numbing and inconceivably vast number of centuries between my own time and that of the proud Minoans who inhabited Crete. Pompeii's eruption in AD79 is as distant from the Minoans in one direction as I am from the Pompeians in the 21st century. In a timescale as vast as that 12 days of being stranded seems wafer thin and insubstantial. No stress.

Yamas!
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Location:Παλαιά Εθνική Οδός Ηρακλείου,Malia,Greece

We're saved! We're saved! Oh.

So, at midnight last night I settled down for a sleep when suddenly my 'phone started going crazy with texts to tell me that British airports had reopened at 10pm GMT (midnight here). My initial reaction was to consider pulling my pj top over my head and doing a lap of the pool to celebrate but I decided that was unseemly for a 38 year old Law teacher. And a mite chilly. And insufficiently scaffolded.

So, I'm saved! I'm going home! Well, not quite. The earliest flight my tour operator can book my whole family on is Friday 30th April, that's in 10 days' time! Thankfully I suspected this might occur and I booked a contingency flight for Evan & I earlier in the week whilst they were still available at a cost of €160. So we are hopefully going on Tuesday 27th which is about a week away. Now it seems that spending that much money on a spare flight is a bargain, particularly as I've heard of a colleague whose repatriation costs have exceeded £2000. But she's home now and I'm not.

Now I feel rather like I'm in a Phoney War. The chaos is over but it will be an entire working week until I'm back doing my job or pottering around my own home. We continue to make best endeavours to get back: we ring the consulate daily (I have to say Heraklion consulate staff are just lovely) and on Friday when Easyjet flights resume we're going to the airport again to see whether there's any chance of flying with them - although the website suggests they are all full.

Our international volcanic family is depleted now: our gorgeous Danish co-strandees Anne, Henrijk and Maja have set off for Denmark flying via Athens and Bucharest. I wish them well. The intrepid Jude and Shaun from Sheffield were last heard of in Italy and I hope they're making amazing progress across the continent and will beat me back to Yorkshire.

And whilst I'm sleeping again, and eating again and I've even done actual smiling I can't wholly relax. There's always a niggling worry the flights will be grounded again or that some unforeseen issue will stand between me and LS15. So if you know any millionaires with huge yachts floating round the Aegean right now you might want to suggest to them an exciting cruise between Crete and the Leeds - Hebble navigation. With four very polite passengers aboard.

Yamas!


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Location:Παλαιά Εθνική Οδός Ηρακλείου,Malia,Greece

Leave your own sofa at your peril

If your personality is pure lunacy knitted together with a hefty bundle of unwiseness you might consider leaving the postcode in which you live. Usually I live in LS15 and after the events of the past few days I am going to ask the probation service to electronically tag me to prevent me from ever wandering further than the end of the street. I will taser myself should I ever discover myself creeping into a Travel Agency. Don't do it kids, it ain't worth it. But - and I'm not suggesting you do - but if you persist in the wild recklessness of leaving your own gorgeous country (blessed as it is with Chinese takeaways and bus stops with poorly spelt English graffiti) you may become stranded in A Foreign Place.

This is a non-exhaustive list of advice I can proffer to the stranded traveller.
1. As soon as you get stranded your holiday STOPS. You are no longer a holidaymaker, now you are a hostage. Nothing is fun. Oddly, since I got stranded I haven't been taking photos (apart from the blog).
2. You'll go on a dirty protest. Heaven knows the last day I got up and immediately had a shower. My hair is so unkempt I look like Einstein's gran. I do not wear accessories or slap. I'm not saying I don't wash at all but you know the weird lady in each neighbourhood who collects indeterminate brown liquid in jam jars on their manky looking kitchen windowsill? I might become one of them soon.
3. Crying doesn't help but if you do it in a Travel Agent where there's a queue the nice Greek men let you go to the front. Or maybe it's because of the dirty protest smell. I did some quality crying at a Travel Agent today but I'm still on Crete.
4. You will miss spaghetti hoops. A lot.
5. You will start to come up with ever more daft ideas for repatriation. Today I honestly considered what sort of low level criminal activity would be sufficient to get me deported back to the UK, whilst not precluding me from resuming teaching duties there.
6. You will make the same three rubbish jokes all day. Our most lame is saying 'night night, see you next year' to the Taverna owner EVERY night.
7. Always get stranded in a hotel with FREE wifi.
8. You'll just really really really want to go home.

I'm now here for a week at least as that's the first flight I can get on to with Evan. My parents are here until the 30th. That's a looooong time. Maybe the Ark Royal will come to repatriate us before then. Or maybe not.

Yamas!
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Location:Παλαιά Εθνική Οδός Ηρακλείου,Malia,Greece