Butterflies

I’ve got a major attack of reisefeber. I’ve been trying to get some organization into this trip Linda and I are supposed to be embarking on, you see.

Right, to put you in the picture, the events so far:

Sometime before Christmas:
Linda asks if I’d like to go on holiday with her this year, for a week in the summer. I, naturally, reply in the affirmative, with the provisio that we go “somwhere in the British isles” (one track mind, moi?). After a few days we decide on Ireland as the main target.

A little later:
We decide to stick to budget airlines, and figure a stop-over is a good idea what with the flight connections not being guaranteed when you fly Ryanair. One of us (can’t remember which one) starts fantasising about Flemings’ pizza, and we both agree that one night in Worthing is to be desired (we’re equally obsessed with food, one of the reasons it’s so nice going on holiday together), and that it would also be nice to see people there again and go for a pint.

March or so:
I start watching the Ryanair website to ensure we book tickets when they’re cheap. Rolf sends the calendar for this year’s sailing with Spirit of Islay and I realise they will be cruising in Scotland the week after Linda and I have planned to go to Ireland. I suggest to Linda she might have to travel back alone as I’ll want to take an extra week off and go to Scotland, she protests and says she wants to come, too.

April/May:
Norwegian announces they are starting a flight route to Stansted, just like Ryanair, but, crucially, flying out from Gardemoen rather than Torp (miles – literally – more convenient), but they don’t fly Saturdays so we’d have to alter our planned date of departure from 28 to 29 June. We decide it’s worth it, and I book tickets from Oslo to Stansted for 29 June with Norwegian and from Stansted to Shannon for 30 June with Ryanair.

17 June:
I get around to booking the B&B (The Moorings, Selden Road – it’s lovely) at Worthing for Sunday night.

23 June:
We still don’t have tickets to get back from Ireland. I finally get around to sending an e-mail to my old collegues to check whether any of them are free Sunday night. Not surprisingly I get a few negatives, however, some people are game and want to know when we’ll be arriving in Worthing. I go to check coach and train times, and realise we’ll be in Worthing at half nine at the earliest and that English pubs close at 11 on Sundays (I must have been in Norway too long when I’ve forgotten this all-important tidbit of information).

24 June:
Having slept on it and checked Ryanair again, I make an executive decision (sorry Linda, that’s what you get for leaving the bookings to me to go cycling in Öland) and book new tickets from Stansted to Shannon for 1 July. I send a mail off to Worthing asking if, perchance, some people might want to go for a pint Monday night instead…

While I have Ryanair’s attention (well, while I have the webpage up) I also book tickets for both of us from Dublin to Aberdeen for 6 July and from Glasgow to Oslo for Linda for 9 July (she has to be back for Thursday as she’s got a ridiculous number of people staying over for the Arvika festival).

You’ll notice we’re still missing:
– tickets for me to get back in time for work on 14 July
– the B&B booked for the extra night in Worthing
– any B&Bs in Ireland or Scotland
– any idea of how Linda is supposed to get to Glasgow in time for her flight

We’re also a bit wooly in our plans for what to do while we’re in Ireland. We want to go to Limerick and read limericks to each other. We’d quite like to see Cork. We’re definitely going to Dublin, well, we’re flying out from Dublin anyway but I want to see the library at Trinity and there’s an old friend of my family living there so it’d be fun to see him (I saw him last at my Christening or something like that). While in Dublin we’re going to visit Guiness.

Linda: We’re visiting Guiness, are’t we, despite the fact that none of us drink Guiness?
Me: Obviously. You can’t go to Dublin and not see the Guiness factory.
Linda: No, of course. I think there’s a law, actually, that prevents you leaving the city unless you can prove you’ve been.
Me: There probably is, and if there isn’t, there ought to be.

We also have lots of plans for just generally having a good time, and this is bound to involve a few pubs, a second-hand bookshop or two (or twenty) and some good hearty breakfasts at various B&Bs. We’ve travelled somewhat like this before, though that was in Wales, but we ended up having an absolutely lovely time, so we’re banking on it working just as well in Ireland.

Anyone with tips for things we really shouldn’t miss in Ireland, please make yourselves heard.

So, anyway, now I have a massive attack of reisefeber and the butterflies in my stomach are going wild. It really is unreasonable to expect anyone to work the last week before their holidays, how on earth is one supposed to concentrate? Come to think of it, one ought to be excempt from work the first week after the holidays, too, as one always needs at least a week to recover from all the realaxation.

Voice in my head: whatsisface – Moon River