Sunday 17th September 2017, 10.20am (day 2,215)
I was supposed to be flying to St Malo in France today, for the ECIL conference (which in past years has been responsible for the appearance of Dubrovnik, Tallinn and Prague on the blog). However, what you see here is the aftermath of the reason why I have only thus far made it as far as Guernsey in the Channel Islands. There I was meant to change planes, but we ended up departing five hours late from Manchester as, when the first plane began pushing back away from gate 21, its wingtip managed to spear the catering van you see here in the centre. So off we passengers all toddled and returned to the terminal, while (count ’em) eighteen people, including a whole slew of hi-vis and two fully armed coppers stood around doing not very much that could be seen as productive. Nice to see so many people gainfully employed by such a cockup. So that’s me in France 24 hours later than scheduled then — just as well I wasn’t down to do my keynote speech on Monday morning.
Being 42 