Volcano at the end of the street

I fell asleep last night soon after Flight Radar had told me that my beloveds had taken off from Catania airport, late but safely. I woke 3 hours later to discover that Flightradar was still active on my phone and that they were just landing in Gatwick. I couldn't get back to sleep after that and shortly before dawn, a new realisation joined the churn in my head: my scores for the concert in the Netherlands that I am travelling on to are still in my bag - on its way to Bristol with Firstborn - not in Firstborn's bag which is what I now have with me. I've been carting them round for two weeks. Disbelief. Panic...

In daylight I checked with him, and that is indeed where they are, with all my markings up for the concert in Leiden I am due to sing in next Sunday. Totally, totally infuriating.

But there is nothing to be done other than ask our choir leader very kindly to buy me a new set and bring them to Leiden with her when she travels.

A little bit more of Catania this morning: the fish market behind the cathedral, smaller than I expected; jumbles of cafe chairs (extra); Etna at end of every street; the street market, more sprawling than I expected, selling absolutely everything.

The next bit of my journey is to visit an old friend in Hoorn in the north of the Netherlands. The best combination of place, time and money meant that this afternoon I flew to Eindhoven, a lot further south than Hoorn. I knew the times of the buses from Eindhoven airport to the station and was really pleased to duck and dive through the airport fast enough to be the last person onto the unlikely bus, only 25 minutes after landing.

I chatted about holidays in Italy with the man I sat next to on the crowded bus, after his adult son offered me a seat, then, when he saw me about to buy a train ticket to Hoorn on the Netherlands train app, he told me they were driving northwards and could drop me at Zaandam station to save me time. Amazing! 

Before Zandaam he told me it wasn't much of a detour to take me to Hoorn, where his brother lives, and when we got near Hoorn he said he'd take me to my friend's door. She offered them both a drink or a meal but they left with just an invitation to visit Oxford. That is the easiest hitch-hike I've ever done.

C and I met in London in 1987 when our firstborns were 3 months old and we spent almost every day together from then until she moved back to the Netherlands nearly three years later. The firstborns are still in touch. One is a physicist and the other an engineer, thereby challenging a whole lot of what Piaget said about children's learning, since C and her partner were both street performers and magicians, and objects would regularly disappear, reappear elsewhere, or transform into something else. It's good to know that mystery, magic, physics and engineering can co-exist happily.

C and I spent the evening catching up.