Our trouble started before liftoff on Thursday. Heaven forbid – we hadn’t even got ourselves to the airport when we decided, after the haircuts, to pop into St Joseph’s to midday Mass before we left because we needed to remind God that the two of us really need to be looked after on this 2-month journey and to thank Him for getting us well enough to go! So into the Church we went only to be confronted with a guy coming in from the other end of the Church and flapping his arms around and yelling at us to get out. Now this gave me quite a shock – what on earth was going on? After recent events in NZ we needed a quick explanation as to his panic but I can tell you we got ourselves out smartly! The problem turned out to be a fire in a cupboard somewhere so within 10 minutes two appliances arrived and we took off! Next step was to get the Lotto ticket with my numbers I have taken for about 20 years (with little luck I might add!) But for some crazy reason the lady gave me back the 10 week ticket and I ripped it in half and put it in the bin! I suddenly realised that I had left the brain somewhere else that morning and had to take the lid off the bin and search for my ripped ticket which the lady at the shop then cellotaped back together for me whilst laughing at the stupid lady who ripped the ticket in half 10 seconds after paying for it!

The next thing was to call up an Uber to take us back to Remuera – why was this stupid App telling me there were no cars available – what? After trying this for 10 minutes or so we decided to walk to the bus station and use the Gold Cards and Hop Cards to get to the city. All fine until we get to the bus and the boss finds that his Hop Card is in Pauanui which is totally unhelpful because we don’t have any cash in the wallets and the bus driver can’t take a card – well he could take the Hop Card if the blimmin thing wasn’t sitting in Pauanui! We are meeting Dene at the hospital for a quick coffee before we go so I give him a call to tell him of our predicament – “Oh dear” says he “well let me know if you are stuck”. “We are stuck!” I tell him to no avail because the problems at ADHB are more concerning than his folks being in a pickle in Takapuna! The boss then decides to call a Co-Op cab at my suggestion so he calls up the cab company and orders the cab. After 15 minutes the cab is nowhere to be seen when my brain suddenly has a reboot and I am wondering if by turning the phone off and back on might work – it does and within 3 minutes the Uber is here and the cab man is probably still circling Takapuna trying to find us because we couldn’t cancel. Then, we were heading over the bridge to Auckland Hospital when we check the emails on this phone which has come back to life and there is an email from Viking River Cruises saying “due to low water levels on the Elbe River it is unlikely your boat will sail, however ………”. “Well, I say to the boss – we will just go with the flow” whereupon he tells me that clearly there is no flow to go with!

Well I can tell you that by the time we were collected for the airport we couldn’t have cared less about any flow because at least we were on our way and I can also report that when we got aboard that Emirates flight and were offered the glass of champagne I felt like putting a straw in the bottle to recover from the afternoon’s events!

So now we look forward to the riverboat not sailing but according to the Viking man here in the ‘Otel all will be well and we will have a vunderful time – guaranteed!