Grounded II

Thank  you to everyone who commiserated with our admittedly very first world angst yesterday. I'm afraid there will be no flight out to Madeira tomorrow, as the winds are still too high and the next slot is scheduled for Wednesday. I've just been checking out this amazing wind map  - Madeira is a tiny blob engulfed in arrows showing the northerly flow at, currently, 65 kph. We're not going anywhere.

I spent the morning feeling lost - everything was still sitting in my case on the hall floor ready to go. Himself went off to Pilates while I lurked at home, still hoping I was keeping myself Covid-safe in preparation for a holiday. My pal and I had a FaceTime chat over coffee: what if the flight was further delayed? We decided that a holiday beginning late on Wednesday afternoon and ending on Monday wasn't really worth all the hassle, and that if we were offered a choice, we'd choose not to go.

I was in the middle of a not-very-interesting lunch when the texts came through from Jet2 Holidays. They were very matter-of-fact, and told us that we'd soon have a message offering us choices of action. These duly arrived: go ahead on Wednesday as planned; cancel altogether for a full refund; swap for a later date as and when available. I cancelled.

I feel cancelled. Now, at midnight, I wonder if I was too hasty. But we've not got another easily-identifiable week when both of us, from two different households, are equally free. The weather, in addition, looks a tad uncertain until these gales are right out of the way. So no holiday for us.

A diversion arrived in the form of the piano-tuner. Our usual tuner, whom we sort of inherited along with my mother's piano, has retired - he's our age. Our "new" tuner is in fact someone we've known for 45 years or so - he played in Himself's amazing production of Noye's Fludde, and I tutored him in English before I returned to teaching. He now lives in Brazil - and no; he didn't come all this way just to tune our piano. It was good to catch up. In between bouts of conversation he tuned the piano (sounds great now) and I made a big pot of chilli con carne. The rain gradually stopped battering the windows, and by 6pm we decided to go out.

So I'm blipping the amazingly lovely walk we had as it became dark along the Ardyne shore and the bright sky cast a strange glow over the fields. Birds sang an amazing evensong in the silence. Some sense of normality had been restored.

And we've booked lunch at The George in Inveraray for Friday - bestie and husband and us. We've got a refund to spend.