The General Chat Thread (2016-2022)

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thanks everyone - like I said, I don't know why I thought that this might be any different.
We're landing at Heathrow but because families are both up north, and the flights were free through hubby's secondment contract, we're hopping up to Manchester . In the past, we have always sorted everything ourselves and never involved family. My brother volunteered the car hire months ago... even kept checking and got our driving licence details a while back and so on... I heard his (new) partner volunteer her car over the phone.

Not the darned system has crashed on me after I clicked the confirm and had done all the payments... nothing is coming back on the page that says wait. don't close and don't use the back button... grrrr not one of those days, I can feel it happening.

that said after 5 minutes of waiting on that page, I have just received a confirmation email.... so maybe waiting longer is needed... way too long a wait mind you
plus the system keeps trying to take me to the Australian site and I want the UK one, because I'm paying with a UK card and UK address with a UK driving licence.... oh the fun of living in 2 countries.
 
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
thanks everyone - like I said, I don't know why I thought that this might be any different.
We're landing at Heathrow but because families are both up north, and the flights were free through hubby's secondment contract, we're hopping up to Manchester . In the past, we have always sorted everything ourselves and never involved family. My brother volunteered the car hire months ago... even kept checking and got our driving licence details a while back and so on... I heard his (new) partner volunteer her car over the phone.

Not the darned system has crashed on me after I clicked the confirm and had done all the payments... nothing is coming back on the page that says wait. don't close and don't use the back button... grrrr not one of those days, I can feel it happening.

that said after 5 minutes of waiting on that page, I have just received a confirmation email.... so maybe waiting longer is needed... way too long a wait mind you
plus the system keeps trying to take me to the Australian site and I want the UK one, because I'm paying with a UK card and UK address with a UK driving licence.... oh the fun of living in 2 countries.
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Sounds like this whole trip thing is really stressing you out. I am so sorry. Please, as soon as you can, will you let us know when you get there? God willing, safe and sound.
 
cookieee said:
Sounds like this whole trip thing is really stressing you out. I am so sorry. Please, as soon as you can, will you let us know when you get there? God willing, safe and sound.
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yeh - I'm not looking forward to it one bit. My family are stressful at the best of times and i'm not good at social events which is what we are going over there for. plus I still need to use the wheelchair which makes life so much harder travelling. Meds alone and the wheelchair, nebuliser and so on all double the amount we need to take, so travelling lightly is difficult. I broke out in cold sores around my nose almost 2 weeks ago just because of the stress of this journey. I've never ever had them before. Hubby gets them when he's been ill, but until now, 25 years of knowing him, I've never had them. the stress is doing me in.

Now to break it to my mother than we are picking the car up from the airport which means she doesn't need to come and collect us - she's been waiting to do this since February.... she's like an excited kid really. I guess she can still come to the arport and pick me up, but hubby will have to drive the hire car. she's then taking us to the supermarket to get food... before taking us to my sister's house. I understand from brother 1 that she is also collecting brother 2 from the railway station on Friday and coming over to see us which is news to us and mucks up our plans of seeing his family on Friday. I had originally said that the 1st weekend would be with my family and the 2nd weekend with hubby's family. oh the joys of families.....

(btw, I brought my sister and brother 2 up whilst mum and ex-step father were no existent in our lives).
 
@SatNavSaysStraightOn - I so hear you. I love to travel, once I get there. But getting there? I'd rather have a pineapple shoved the wrong way up my...well, you get the idea. :ohmy:

I also get the family thing. Fortunately, my family doesn't travel and we live 75-minutes drive from them, so that's not an issue, but my wife's family - yikes, they find every way under the sun to make everything five times harder than it needs to be. It's like there's some chemical in their brains that considers complication and inconvenience as positive things. :facepalm:
 
the stupid thing is that I love travelling, I love exploring. but since the wheelchair, things have changed and I have lost all of that confidence that I had. must sound stupid given that I'm on the other side of the world to my family and actually came out here with the wheelchair.... that addition came 4.5 years ago. still not got that hang of it, still don't want it, still can't abide it and so on. plus I need to take my crutches with me... now a wheelchair and crutches just don't happen.... 2 large suitcases for the hold and 1 cabin bag... I may bale on my cabin bag and see if I can use hubby's for most of my stuff and use the rucksack on my wheelchair because it just works so much more easily.... ironic I now have no confidence given that 8 years ago I was literally cycling around the world and hadn't got a single plan or clue where I would be at the end of the day - ok there were days where the only choice was the only road, (1 such road was follow it for 5 days until you get to the end, turn left, follow that for 3 days....) but it all got taken away from me overnight....

right - I have to stop and try to get a little more packing done.
 
grrr…..

So far, if it could have gone wrong it has. my brother (no. 1) has let me down badly this morning telling me that we can't borrow his partners car. She's decided that she needs it. Why they have had to leave it until 24hrs before we fly is beyond me, in fact it was my mother who has let it slip without it being said by telling me I needed to speak to Brother no 1, as soon as possible. this was 1:30am this morning, thankfully I have everything blocked at that time - family don't know that if they ring twice inside 15 minutes the second call will get through! so they just facebook messenger me instead and my phone leaves me blissfully unaware. Until 6am that is. then after the alarm has been silenced, the pings start! So instead of packing, I spent the morning trying to hire a car on systems that are convinced I want to pay in AUD and should be entering an Australian address.... and totally ignore all my attempts to get them back into GBP and the UK.... grrrrr

then, yep more, i'm out letting the chickens have a last run around free ranging, having literally just let them out when my landlady and landlord arrive. their dog (a lovely staffie) is loose as normal and runs straight up to me when she sees me. but my chooks are all around me and don't like dogs.... and scatter. 2 disappear off up towards the barn - a direction they have never been before and the rest towards the house. I managed to find one but I still have a chook missing. If she doesn't turn up before dark I'm going to have to sacrifice her to keep the rest of the flock safe and lock up both coops. After tonight those coops won't be open again for free ranging until we get back. Any chook not locked up at night is fox fodder. they are literally sitting targets because they usually sit on the wooden block in front of the automated door which I will be disabling very shortly and along comes mr/mrs fox and no more chook. I just hope that she picks up the courage sooner rather than later (she's only got maybe 45 minutes of light left) and finds her way back. I've been out and searched for her but only found the 1 of them... She's a good layer and a lovely bird who will happily come and eat from your hands. Finger's crossed.

And that has reminded me, I have to take a screwdriver out with me and go and change the time on the automated door in the coop down here - its a cheap automated door and a bit of a pain tbh, you get what you pay for.... you can't manually open or close the door. you can't change the times on the door without a screw driver and you.... much prefer the other 2 automated doors we have and one of those can be a pain in the backside. The best is actually an American make, but shhh, don't tell the Americans that I don't like the Australian one as much. I did nearly buy a British one, but...

Right back to packing for this damned trip.

Tea is going to be pie, egg and chips... freezer to oven (trust me the coop is like a freezer right now)….​
 
From Lazio beaches: maybe I made a not very shocking discovery, but swimming at the sea is definitely more complicated than swimming in the pool, at least for me. So this morning after two swimming strokes, I decided to get carried away by the waves.
By the way, greetings from Croatia!
 
Yeah, one bit of luck. My missing hen, Tilly, has turned up.

Just before dark, I spotted her over by yet another barn. This barn I know she knows but I still went to try and get her back with the flock. She's hungry, spooked and stressed but assuming she's ok in the morning, she'll be ok. I hand fed her to make sure I got food into her when I went up to do the nightly head count and disconnect the automatic door. I prefer to be safe than sorry so not only is it turned off (that's just a mode it had called off), I've also disconnected the battery and pour something over the gate so it's obvious that it's not in use.

Well otherwise we're packed, I've got most of the things sorted out . the hire car purple sent me a precheck in thing to fill out. Glad I got that one at home and not on the road. I didn't have a digital copy of our current UK driving licences in the right format. I had pdf they wanted jpeg! So I had to scan them in again. Then same with proof of address for hubby. And then I had to do the dvla check code for them as well... finally sorted that, spoke with my mum. She took the news as well as could be expected. I feel really sorry for her because she's been planning to pick us up from the airport since February if not earlier. I could hear the disappointment in her voice. luckily no tears. All I could do was apologise. Why I don't know. It's my brother that should be.... grrr words will be said.

Right time for sleep if I can. I've barely day down all day and certainly not this evening. Non stop go go go...
 
@SatNavSaysStraightOn - the worst is behind you! Smooth sailing (flying) from here on out.

I understand a little bit of your added burden with traveling. We had booked an overseas holiday in 2010 (in December, no less), and several months out, the wife was diagnosed with myositis, and before she got it under control, spent a significant time bed-bound, and then worked her way up to a wheelchair for a few months.

She was damn determined to go on that trip, though, and since she had some mobility by that time, we didn't travel with a chair, but relied on the airlines to provide assistance en route, then made arrangements with the river cruising company and the hotel to have a chair available for the duration.

That didn't always work as planned, but we got through it.

She's since had a major stroke, so she's got lifelong fallout from that that makes traveling interesting, and she has a separate carryon case devoted to meds and equipment that goes everywhere, but we manage.

With all that, though...she's a much better traveler than I am. :laugh:
 
My worst flight was from Miami to New Zealand (Auckland), layover in Los Angeles. When we landed in Auckland, an older woman inline, behind me, at immigration, fell to the ground. They were still working on her when I cleared immigration and customs.:(
 
CraigC said:
My worst flight was from Miami to New Zealand (Auckland), layover in Los Angeles. When we landed in Auckland, an older woman inline, behind me, at immigration, fell to the ground. They were still working on her when I cleared immigration and customs.:(
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I actually had a man die in the seat behind me on my one and only trip to the USA.
 
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