The Island of the Lotus Eaters

After a long argument at breakfast about trying to get overland I've had to give in and stay today. My parents don't even have a flight booking home now but are relaxed about that as Dad believes he'll be flying on Friday and fears I'm turning into a hysterical, proto-anorexic lunatic. And he's probably right. Evan says it's like the Island of the Lotus Eaters on the Odyssey where everyone gets stuck. He would.

I have €5 spending cash to my name so I'm going to get in touch with my travel insurance to see if I can get some funds to treat Evan to some exciting activities. Like, er, crazy golf.

As I'm stuck here for the future I need to get an income stream. The best plan I can see is that I should obsessively blog and attempt to become recognised as a European Lady of Letters whilst paying for my upkeep by economically exploiting Evan.

1. Income stream 1. Pool boy.






2. Income stream 2. Pool shark.






3. Income stream 3. Bar tender.




I might need to get a fake moustache for him to convince them that he's over 18. Will eyebrow pencil work?


4. Income stream 4. Celebrity chef.



Evan confirms he's mastered pizza and toasties and is now working on perfecting his spatchcock chicken with a ceps and artichoke coulis, parsnip flakes and an aniseed jus. Apparently it's a favourite lunchtime choice for y2.


5. Income stream 5. Lemon tree arboculture. Apparently he'll be a millionaire by next year.






So, wonder what the next few days and hours are going to bring?

Yamas!


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Location:Παλαιά Εθνική Οδός Ηρακλείου,Malia,Greece

Odysseys

One of the best things about coming to Crete has been the interest it has stirred in Greek Mythology for Evan. And if you asked him what his favourite story was he'd tell you it was The Odyssey. He'd be able to tell you about the Lotus eaters, Polyphemus the Cyclops, Circe, visiting Tiresias in the underworld and how Odysseus finally got home to Ithaca. His pronunciation of lots of these words is unusual - but gorgeous.

You know where this story is going, don't you? So, as I'm not a Classical scholar like my 7 year old son I'm a bit shaky on the details but I think I've been Cassandra for the past few days: the soothsayer of doom who is fated never to be believed but is right. I've been saying we need to set off over land and sea because it's not when the planes start flying again, it's if. And the situation in the UK is deteriorating again.

So, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. I've had another virtually sleepless night and have been frustrated by the fact that neither Aegean airlines nor Minoan ferries websites are compatible with the iPhone. I've decided to undertake the odyssey home and I've got the most difficult part of the journey to undertake in an hour or so: getting my parents to understand that I can't just sit on Crete for an indeterminate future. According to Seat 61 it takes 4 days to travel from Crete to London overland. Factoring in the disruption it might take me 6. But my first flight off this island is an entire week away and there is absolutely no guarantee that airspace will be available next week.

So, I'm going to face frustration, tiredness, overcrowding and boredom. Sounds better to me than Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis. But maybe that's what Homer was writing about all along: the overwhelming desire to see home again. I might be on odyssey to LS15 rather than Ithaca.

With huge apologies to Homer, classical scholars and my son I'm about to misquote... Tell me, Muse, of the resourceful single Mum and wee boy who were driven to wander far and wide ... We will see the cities of many people and we might learn something of their ways. I'm hoping to avoid great anguish on the high seas. And as a vegetarian I'm pretty safe from devouring the oxen of Hyperion, the Sun-god.

Wish me well - and if you're enjoying this blog please promote it. I'd like to see comments from well wishers as I struggle across Europe. Evan could tell you that the continent is named after Europa a beautiful woman carried to Crete by Zeus in the guise of a white bull. I have to say I've tried putting that into Google as a method of escape but www.godsofolympus.gr is incompatible with the iPhone.

Yamas!


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Location:Παλαιά Εθνική Οδός Ηρακλείου,Malia,Greece

Horrid notes for my parents to find on awaking

Summarised: flight cancelled. Please can we get off this island any way we can tomorrow? Am sick of being a hostage to fortune.

I'm going to stick it under their apartment door now. Feel rotten about being the bearer of bad news.

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Location:Παλαιά Εθνική Οδός Ηρακλείου,Malia,Greece

Flight cancelled

My flight tomorrow just got cancelled. I cannot express how upset I am right now.


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Location:Παλαιά Εθνική Οδός Ηρακλείου,Malia,Greece

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

Brotherhood of Man

No, the 70s Eurovision winners haven't been sent to entertain the stranded. By all accounts throwing oneself into a lava flow is preferable. No, what I'm finding is that until the flight chaos every holidaymaker on this island was an individual, and now we are a community. In my hotel there are 5 sets of guests and we all know each other by first name and spend breakfast discussing updates and potential repatriation strategies. In town there are the same people in the Taverna each night and we greet each other like colleagues. Martha, the Taverna owner, is planning to introduce us to her mother-in-law in the matriarchal village as her international volcano family.

At times like this you see the very best of people. Today I let my iPhone out of my grasp for a while so my Danish friends here could Skype their family. Their conversation was whether they could fly to Vienna and then catch the train to Denmark.

With some southern airspace opening today we are now looking into how to travel overland. The nautical ideas tried yesterday were unsuccessful so now we are searching for terrestrial alternatives.

1. The Great Escape 1. The motorcar. This one appears cheap but not particularly spacious.




Although it may be easier to extract than this one:




2. The Great Escape 2 - a luxury motorhome



This one may be ditched in, erm, a ditch but it offers free boat transfers. Across the channel potentially?

3. The Great Escape 3. Coping with potential natural hazards - rockfalls and the like:




4. The Great Escape 4. Horsepower.



5. The Great Escape 5 - pedalpower.



6.The Great Escape 6. Desperation sets in.



The mop bucket has wheels and maybe we can set up some sort of propulsion system with the gas canisters? Would this be adversely affected by volcanic ash?

Oh, it's raining today too.

Yamas!
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Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Right. I want to go home so we have been prototyping various methods for getting from one island nation (Crete) to another (England)

Method 1: the simple raft.


Method 2: hi-tech pedalo.



Method 3- There's room on my board for 2



Method 4 - an actual ship called Nana, with Nana at the helm. Sadly as it's part of a playground it might not be as seaworthy as we would require on the Bay of Biscay





Method 5 - Evan has his Dolphin 5 badge and can do a whole length without putting his foot down. Is this sufficient?



Method 6 - Crete is the island of Icarus and Daedalus. Are palm tree wings susceptible to volcanic ash?



Icarus played by Dad. Evan as Daedalus.




This is all proof that we tried really really hard to get home.

Yamas!


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