Well, another holiday, another delay.
Had a nice enough holiday in Tenerife, then came the journey back.
Okay so it wasn't exactly the nine hour delay from Egypt, but that very trip back flashed through my mind at one point. Everything was going well until we got on the bus that takes you from the terminal to the plane. An alarm sounds and the wife says that no alarm sounds good. She was right. "Everyone off"! Back into the terminal we go. No explanations. Then the fight goes completely off the board, and the next departure, to Dublin, flashes up.
As I slumped to the floor in desperation, thoughts of that terrible trip back from Egypt went through my mind. Luckily, thankfully, we only waited an hour, and we were on our way home.

Who'd have thought having a new kitchen fitted would be so much upheaval? After living in our present house for seven years, it was either move or improve. Therefore Mrs Dazter decided it was time for a new kitchen and utility room. A week without the ability to cook anything meant we had to eat out of chip wrappers, or find somewhere different to eat out.
So lately we've eaten at a few restaurants we'd never tried before. Much better than the local pub fare, but obviously much pricier. Still, we enjoyed getting out during the week for a change.
The kitchens a belter by the way.

We went to Egypt for our honeymoon six weeks ago, saw the Pyramids, the Sphynx, Cairo Museum, Valley Of The Kings, The Temple At Karnak, a VIP cruise along the Red Sea and snorkelling at some of the best in the world.
We had a fantastic time for a fortnight and the weather was around 100 degrees every day.

Then came the trip home.

All went well to start with. We left on time after more security checks than Northern Ireland in the 80s.
We then hear the trolley dollies asking if we have any doctors (plural) on board. Some poor chap had a heart attack. He hadn't been feeling well before the flight and really shouldn't have been allowed to fly.
Then some young lass in her early 20s had sickness and the trots bad enough for her to faint near the toilets.

So we had to land at Gatwick so these two could get sent to hospital.
After one and a half hours the captain informs that his staff have worked too many hours for us to continue back to Manchester and we had to get off and coaches would take us the rest of the way.
As we sat in the arrivals lounge at 2AM, some rep told us they couldn't get enough coaches until midday. Cue a lot of "your taking the mickey", and other obscenities.
At about 5.30 we were told that we were after all getting back on our plane and flying home at 7.40. The problem was some people had decided to make their own way back. So we had to go through the rigmorole of booking in again. Gatwick staff obviously won't let you through checking in with bottles bigger than 100ml. But we'd already been to duty free and had bottles of booze. Cue another stand-off.
We waited another 2 hours in the departure lounge. Then we had to identify our own luggage because some of it belonged to those passengers who had already left. So on the tarmac at Gatwick are hundreds of suitcases with over a hundred people trying to find theirs.

We landed safely in Manchester fourteen and a half hours after leaving Sharm El Sheik airport. I was up for around 36 hours without sleep.
Not one of us blamed the chap with the heart problem, but Thomsom Airways staff treated us like idiots, and I'll never fly with them again.