Event 11: The non-holiday to Northern Ireland

Richard got married on 11th August this year. Mr Drake and I were invited and had spent a long time planning our trip over to Northern Ireland to get to his wedding. Flights, lifts and b&b accommodation were all booked along with some fun jollies planned with old friends. We were all set and very much looking forward to it.

What we hadn't reckoned on was terrorists trying to blow up some planes to America. Very inconsiderate of them really when we had a wedding to get to. I arrived at Luton airport and found Mr Drake (which was no easy task considering the chaos there) and, having never flown before and feeling overly anxious, I was then ready to head straight home. So I was part annoyed and part relieved when we found out our flight was cancelled. Mr Drake went to speak to an easy jet man and pleaded with him but his best advice was to go home and get a refund. Thanks mate, that's very helpful. So we found some internet and got searching for other flights from other airports to anywhere in Ireland. No luck.

Giving up on Luton which was increasingly busy and chaotic we headed into London. We tried to ring Mr Drake's mum to let her know we were going to crash at her house for a while, only to (unsurprisingly really) find that Mr Drake didn't have her number on his phone. It's amazing he still had the phone to be honest. So, we finally got hold of her number and arrived at the NHS surgery where she works (for a lift home) to find that the entire staff were all on the internet looking at options to get us to the wedding! Flying was cancelled out pretty quickly so we turned to the ferry as our only hope. There was one option left: leave immediately for a long train journey to the coast, a 2.30am ferry to Dublin arriving at 6am followed by a 6 hour train journey to the wedding arriving with 30 mins to spare... And Mr Drake even paused to think about it before he said no!

So, we didn't get to the wedding. And nor did most of the other English guests. And nor did the best man, who had a car crash earlier in the week. Poor Richard. But he seemed to cope without us. But to make up for not getting to the wedding I did get to see where Mr Drake lives, and meet his mum, and have a day out in London. Not quite the same though.