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OUR AROUND THE WORLD TRIP

Episode One: "The First Day" or, "The Longest Day" or, "The aborted flight to LA!"

September 11th 08.00 hrs. Caught a flight from Manchester to Heathrow. Easy! No sooner were we up than we were down. Then the excitement started. The transfer from the plane to terminal 4 was terrible. About twenty minutes in a rickety bus through traffic lights and tunnels, past bag handling and loading bays. Really brought us down to earth. Then we had to find our way to Terminal 2. Well, our way was via the shopping mall (would you believe it?). I managed to pick up a tiny yet gigantically over priced teddy bear for Catrina in LA and Elaine spotted two 1 litre bottles of Gordon's gin for £15 which I was commandeered to lug over to terminal 2, which, I discovered, is a bloody long way. This, together with hand baggage that weighed a ton. So it was clink, clink, clink all the way. It gave a very real meaning to the word "terminal". The two hours they gave us to transfer from one plane to another was well needed.

So, onto the plane (clink, clink), nice take off. Cabin crew and hospitality were excellent. Seven hours into the flight I was nodding-off (Elaine had done so) when I felt the plane turning. Thinking we were now over US airspace and we were changing course to head down to LA (as the pilot had said earlier) I wasn't bothered. Twenty minutes later, however, and the pilot came on and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen. We have a slight problem. The United States have closed their air space so we must return to the UK. We will be landing in CARDIFF in approximately 6 hours". Well, lots of the passengers started to giggle and laugh as if it were a minor hick-up in their journey. I, however, immediately thought, "God, nuclear war!!". I couldn't remember US airspace ever being closed before! As the flight back progressed I thought more deeply and came up with another scenario, "Hijack!". "We've been bloody hijacked". My reasoning was that when a plan is hijacked they direct it to land at a small airport so that when it explodes it causes as little damage as possible. I then started to think of becoming a hero and tackling the hijackers single handed. Sticking my fingers up their machine guns, etc., but I think this was in one of my "nodding-off" periods. Obviously, the cabin crew could say nothing of what was going on although every Tom, Dick and Harriet asked. Another hour or so into the flight and the plane was full of long, sad faces. Yes, it had finally sunk in that their trip to LA was well and truly over. For some time to come, too.

The landing at Cardiff was scary, even for seasoned fliers such as we (cough!). I'm sure the pilot made three approaches because I kept seeing the same piece of coast line followed by a large expanse of sea and the plane never seemed to stop turning. Perhaps he was using up fuel in case of a crash landing, I thought. Seeing the nervous looking cabin crew walking to the back of the plane wearing parachutes didn't help any. We landed with a bang, reverse thrust, skid, scream (the pilot) and to the view of sheep scattering everywhere. Eventually we stopped and it seemed the whole airport staff were lining the runway to welcome us .....or to watch the spectacle of a 747 with 400 passengers land at such a small airfield. The plane could not reach the terminal buildings and had to park at an angle on the runway so that the steps could be brought up.

It was then lots of queues. Queues for transport to the terminal and queues to collect our baggage. Queues for transport to the hotels and eventually (hours later) queues to get into the fancy Celtic Manor at Newport. All of these queues were accompanied by the "clink, clink, clink", of course. Then it was even more queues and "clinks" to check in. Now we come to the incident that Elaine recalls so well (never stops telling everyone). We booked in and were told to go to the "right" were we could take the lift to the third floor. However, people were queuing in droves behind us and the right became a left, a right, and another left before we could work our way through them. The eventual "right" came up and we found our way blocked by a desk and chair. Removing the chair I dragged the bags around the desk thinking "What a stupid place to put a desk and chair anyway", not noticing a piece of conduit on the floor directly in my path covering the phone and PC lines to the desk. I dragged the conduit, lines and phone along with me, as I tugging at the bags. Seeing I was entangled I tugged even harder to get free, bringing the phone across the floor and almost taking the computer with it. Only the pleas of a poor young porter stopped me. "Sir, sir, where are you going?". "To the lift", I said. "The lifts are this way, sir". Directing me to a second "right" turning. We eventually got to our rooms and turned the TV on to find the full horror of what had happened. It was then I started to appreciate the "clink, clink, clink" as we raided the mini bar for mixers.

Episode Two: "Re: The Re-scheduling"

We arose the following morning, not a little confused by what had happened the previous day …and night! (mixer bottles everywhere!) As our senses gradually revived we began to notice our surroundings. The room seemed to have been arranged more as an office than a bedroom. Our bed was a gigantic settee with a bed in it. The units opposite, that held the "telly", were huge (as was the "telly") and the whole place shouted "conference". We made our way to breakfast via the gallery above the entrance hall. There we could see how absolutely massive the place (or palace!) really was. Sitting down to our meal and Elaine showed her usual lack of any inhibitions by tattling the full "Welsh" breakfast with relish. Double everything. Well, everything she liked, which means mainly bacon, sausage and toast (no fried bread available, unfortunately!). There were business people chattering all around us, effortlessly trying to overpower each other with their ostentatious public school accents. Elaine scoffed away, as if it was her first meal for a month. Well, we were on holiday. Secretly, I do enjoy being common with toffee nosed folk.

Breakfast over and bags packed we searched around to find out what was going to happen to us. Ah! A coach was on its way to take us back to Heathrow so we could commence our trip once again. It was one o'clock when the coach finally arrived and then it was discovered there was not enough room for all the cases so a van had to be called which took us to turned 4pm and all we'd had since breakfast was tea and biscuits. Elaine was thankful for her earlier "scoff" by this time.

Over the Severn bridge and Heathrow loomed at about 7 o'clock. It was total mayhem and my ability to spot the right queue did not go wasted as the Americans were sifted of into an anti room. I left Elaine in the queue and eavesdropped on the announcement. "We have no flights and no hotel accommodation" was the gist of it! I believe they spent the next three days waiting in the lounge for a flight to LA. Many had young children. To cut it short we were offered a flight home or a flight to anywhere at all. There were just two seats on a flight to Sydney via Singapore and Melbourne. We jumped at it. We would reverse our schedule and go round the world clockwise instead.

We had been making, or attempting to make, frantic phone calls since we arrived at our hotel in Wales. At the airport we continued the process. However, all lines were blocked to the States. John and Joanne managed to get in touch with Mark at home and told him they had been in touch with Barbara, who must have felt that the whole world was against her. All her preparations had gone right down the pan. We didn't know then how much she had put into preparing for our visit. Time off work, arranging our apartment, and much, much more. At the airport there was Hotmail.com free computer access. I managed to open up an account and send emails to Barbara and Bill Fletcher. Then, thank god, as the time for boarding was getting near, we got through to Babs. Her only concern was for our safety. It was reciprocal because we were concerned for her, wondering where the heck we had ended up.

We boarded the plane and "long-hauled it" to Singapore. The half hour break there gave us just enough time to find a smoke place for Elaine and me to shoot off to the phones and try to contact Len in Sydney and tell him that we were on our way 14 days ahead of schedule. However, I couldn't get through.

Our stop at Melbourne was a little longer with a change of aircraft. We were told at passport control that transfer passengers should collect their bags and check them in for their transfer flights. We went to baggage collection and only one case turned up. Enquiries led to our discovery that we were not transfer passengers at all but transit passengers. One bag had gone to the aircraft bound for Sydney where we should have been heading! So it was back through passport control (with a bit o crossing out of passport stamps) and a dash to join the plane. And so on to Sydney.

What amazed me on our approach aboard the almost empty 747 was the number of golf courses beneath us. One led straight into another as we followed the coastline. It may sound silly but I think we were low enough to see the players yet I never spotted one. We disembarked only to encounter more problems. We were stopped at customs. The detector spotted something and I was asked various questions until I came up with the right answers. "Do you have any items to declare?" "er ..no!" "Do you have any items of food", "No", ….again, "Do you have any ….". Well, after the third time of asking I knew I was not going to get away with it so I said, "Foood, Oh! Foood!" I opened my case expecting a large chocolate Champaign bottle with bursting bubble made of Rum Truffles with the inscription, "To Babs, thanks for everything" to be revealed. However, the whole lot had melted en route and all there was was heap of chocolate in one corner of the box! "Ok! Said the custom's man; "I just needed for you to disclose it. Off you go!". He didn't see the two packets of crumpets that Barbara had especially asked for and the fox fur stole, a family heirloom, of which I was carrying a picture of mum wearing as she promenaded at some seaside resort in the 30's.

We phoned Len in the arrival lounge. "Ah! Tony. Where are ya? In Singapore?" I had woken him; not realising it was scarcely after 8 in the morning. After a lot of quick thinking Len told us to find McDonald's upstairs and he would meet us there in 45 minutes. Finding McDonald's took all of 30-odd minutes so we didn't have long to wait till we saw Len, towering above everyone (he's 6ft 4ins tall), marching through the throng looking from side to side trying to locate us. Like an old digger looking for snipers. I managed to get a snap of him before he spotted us. Then it was a quick "Mac" breakfast and off we went to find his car and begin our visit to Sydney, Australia.

More to come soon.......

We've made a new discovery in the Creacall family. Darren Williams (#626) (my great-grandfather's brother's great-great-grandson) has a little girl called Mia. She lives near Bournmouth in Dorset with Darren and her mother. We hope to get more information and pictures soon.

All our Family Genealogy has now been stored in the Granite Mountain Vaults of the Latter Day Saints near Salt Lake City. The vaults will withstand nuclear blasts and meteorite attack so, when none else is left on this planet ....our names will still be here .....what a cheerful thought!

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