After a beautiful week in England, it’s time to go home. We’d love to stay longer but I’ve got to be back in Barcelona the next day to star in a new HP marketing video. So we scour the house for all random bits-and-bobs, pack the suitcases to the gills, make the sandwiches for the trip, thank grandma and granddad for their hospitality, cram the fam into the rental car, and speed through the pouring rain for an hour and a half to the nearest international airport. Anyone who has kids will appreciate the anguish involved in completing the previous sentence. We return the rental car and proceed to wait on the check-in line that snakes around the universe and never actually advances – you know the one. Jan and I take turns watching our suitcases on line and chasing our slippery children around the entire airport. We finally get to the front of the line and the friendly-yet-incompetent lady behind the counter kindly informs us that our tickets are not for today. They’re for tomorrow.

Shit.

Quick, think. I ask about getting on the flight anyway. We’re told to wait to one side while they check. Meanwhile, I hear the announcement closing our flight. We’re eventually told that there were 10 no-shows and we could buy tickets on the flight for 412 pounds. 412 pounds?!!? Fuck it, I say OK! We’re sent to another line where another lady – not quite as friendly but seven times more incompetent than the first lady – starts stabbing keys on her high-tech monochrome computer in some slow-motion hunt-and-peck fashion, all the while muttering, “I don’t know…”. She then tells us that it’s “impossible”. Shit.

So there we are. Stranded in the airport. In the middle of nowhere. No place to go. No transportation. With two uncomfortable and unrelenting kids. Jan and I then proceed to fail miserably at calmly discussing a reasonable solution to our dilemma.

We eventually decide to head back to grandma and granddad’s house with out tail between our legs. Who knows when the next train leaves. We ask at the taxi stand and they quote us 152 pounds for the one-way trip. 152 pounds?!!? They are not kidding (I asked). I ingeniously head back to the rental car desk from whence we had just left. 72 pounds for a 24-hour rental. Score! So back we drive. Defeated. Tired. Hungry. And definitely not on schedule to make the next day’s video shoot.

Jan had booked the flight and I just wrote the wrong goddamn date in my calendar – and all subsequent plans were made according to that botched date. So we missed the flight, but flew the next day. I missed the video shoot, but found a last-minute replacement (thanks, James!). And we ended up losing some more money, time from our lives, and a bit more of what little hair remains on my head. But I’m home now and typing this from the comfort of my own desk. It’s good to be home.