Bomb scares, London at 2am and Lost luggage

Life's full of surpirses or at the time one might say frustrating attacks at me personally because every one is at war with me and my family...aaarrrrh!......

Thursday night was ok, made the Stansted to London Express train with 30 seconds to go and arrived nicely in Liverpool street at 12:45am Friday. So ran out the station, from the blur..y picture you can see the speed... to catch a London Taxi to a Comfort Inn not too far away in central London.

I think the cab driver thought I was on a scenic tour because every other taxi sped past as if we were at walking speed. Anyway slept at 2am ready for the next race across town, onto the Heathrow Express, repack in the airport to accomodate the new travel requirements that state you can only have a pencil case size hand luggage with nothing in it due to the risk of terrorism! Ok that was slightly cynical!

I needed to pick up 2 new phones for colleagues and had pre-purchased my tube ticket ready to return to Victoria tube for a quick exit to Paddington, only to arrive and everyone is leaving the tube station with the tanoy in the background ringing "all passengers please leave the station, all passengers please leave the station , this is an emergency". I turned to the taxi rank to view about 80 people in a queue with no taxis!

Found one about 100m from the station flagged him down and now in a sweat was driven to Paddington, great I thought that's my problem for the day, free sailing now :)

Got to Heathrow, repacked, took my laptop only on board and settled down in the BACK seat of the plane....hello BA....I can't recline so far on this seat, isn't there a food drawer in the galley that's more comfortable, I'll have that please.. so much for frequent flyer card!

So we land and I'm out of the back of the plane with my landing card and 5th in the queue for immigration..straight through customs and first at the luggage belt....1 hour later..... last at the luggage belt! One case missing, only the case with the new phones....please no more, I've had enough now....

So another 20 minutes while one man serves a dozen people, one form at a time which he has to fill in and I leave through baggage check and yes you guessed it, I get searched.! Wire's, clothes, 2 laptops, playstation steering wheel for the boys, everything, all undone...

I'm off to the airport now, they say my case has arrived....mmmm....not sure whether to believe them or just turn up and expect to find the zipper and everything else gone....

Life's quite calm today...as if it never happened!

Heading South....

Have you ever sat and listened to lots of people speak Norwegian? Try it! It's like listening to a lot of chefs from the "Muppet Show". smile

Now having disparaged a language, listen to this....the Norwegian's are one of the most polite and cultured cultures I have met. They are gentle, polite, kind in conversation and quiet in living, I really am impressed...the world could learn a lot about diplomacy from this nation.

I am sitting here in Torp airport waiting to board a Ryanair flight to Stansted and have FREE wireless access. I land at 11.10pm, then catch the express coach to London Victoria and will slide into the Comfort Hotel in Victoria about 1.00am. Then up to cross London, picking up 3 x Sony Ericsson 810i phones for colleague Ghanaians and then fly out of Heathrow at 2.15pm....phew...

Nice to have been back in Europe again...but so pleased to be heading home to family...home is where heart is.....

Getting to the subzero lakes of Norway

Passed through Cheltenham this week and took this snap of my sisters favourite spot...did it while buying 36 pairs of white ankle socks at Primark for £9...

Then I queued with the masses at Stansted to get a bucket seat on Ryanair to Norway..this kind of line brings all people to the same level, everyone kind of moved in a flock like coordination....quite funny really...

What a contrast! Up in Norway for management meetings and the setting is as vivid as Africa is hot. Reduced daylight hours and freezing rain.

Malaria update: All is well and back up generator is nearly ready, just needs wiring and fuel to do a test on hopefully today or tomorrow.

Back in Ghana this Friday....

Malaria visits our house!

...it was 3:00am last night, we had been without power for 2 nights straight and nothing during the day yesterday either... it was unbearable heat, no breeze, the back up generator wouldn't work, we lay there drifting in and out of sleep and depair at the wet heat...under a tin roof aswell!

Karen nudged me..."help". She was shivering in this heat, chronic headache, aching fingers and toes and huddled in a ball. "I've been praying for hours" she said, "I'm well and it's over..." it was obvious if things were to get worse we would need to get to hospital quickly.

Right now she's in bed, power is back the house, the fever is over, the aches subsiding slowly and she is recuperating... it also means her resistance is being built up having passed this first great hurdle.

In the back of our minds we know we all confront malaria every time a mosquito flies around us....

....and for this recovery, Lord thank you.

Memory Lane - 2003 & 2004

I regularly visit this website: http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/ it's a photo blog, one of the best I know on the web. Daily photos are posted primarily in Canada and from where the photographer lives - TORONTO.

We lived there for 2 years and still have images in our hearts of the life and friends left behind...

When you visit this site, click "day before" at the bottom left of each picture to see previous photos, the picture quality is excellent, some amazing views and others from outside Canada.