Desperate hope

In between the cheap comedy shots of how we might get home I've been working really hard at trying to actually get home. And attempting as far as I can to do the parts of my job that can be done with an iPhone and free wifi hotspots.

I was awake to 4am last night trying to book a contingency flight for Tuesday 27th as it really wasn't looking at all hopeful that any airspace would clear today. My original flight is rebooked for nearly midnight tomorrow (Tuesday 20th) but I wanted a back up plan in case that one gets cancelled. There's a danger that you wait until your flight is cancelled and then you attempt to get on the next one, only to find it fully booked. Hence the contingency which I'm desperately hoping I won't need.

I awoke at 8am and checked my Twitter feed to find that the government was planning to send the navy out to repatriate the stranded. I rang the British consulate at Heraklion at 8.30 to try to get my name on a list to get home but they weren't compiling a list of Brits stranded here and told me to contact my airline instead.

Mid-morning was spent trying to email work in as best I could and discussing strategies to get home. Oh, and posting the last blog.

Then I got in touch with my son's Dad who is a railway engineer to see if his company could help with the long pan-continental rail trip home. Their response was that there was a 6 week lead time for rail travel coupons, there were no emergency provisions for this situation and they weren't planning any. Evan's Dad was great. Shame about his employers.

Then we discussed trying to talk a local tourist daytrip company into running a coach from here to Paris ideally. However all the tour offices were shut when I looked.

That left a trip to the airport to see whether there were options there. When we arrived I was really over-excited to find Air Mediteranee flights to Toulouse, Marseilles and Nantes flying this evening. However I soon established with their handling company that they were fully booked. I was trying to bite back tears as I queued at the information desk to get help with finding the British consulate office on a map.

Then I got this text from my boyfriend: 'Sky news breaking: sky sources understand plans are in place to open airspace in scotland at 0600, midland at 12 and south at 1800'. This led to frenzied attempts to open the Sky.com website on my iPhone but it just kept crashing.

So my family drove back to our resort where there is a coffee shop we know which shows BBC World. We sat through the dullest Hard Talk ever whilst hungrily reading the text feed at the bottom. At no point was there ANY reference to a relaxation of Air Traffic control over the UK. We were devastated. Even worse the hourly news report started and the whole report was simply the same newsclips that we'd watched being rehashed all day about losses. We gave up hope.

Then the most beautiful 'Breaking News' subtitle I've ever seen 'Manchester Airport to reopen at 8am'. My family screamed with joy, quite upsetting the old Greek men playing their clicky domino thingy game across the room. But then we all indulged in a game of acting out aeroplanes flying with outstretched arms and lots of grinning. So that was alright then.

So, am I going home tomorrow?I hope so desperately but I don't know.

Yamas x


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Location:Παλαιά Εθνική Οδός Ηρακλείου,Malia,Greece