After last night’s bad news, we completely changed our plans and made arrangements to head north first thing this morning. We still didn’t know what to do with the Formula One tickets so my kind sister-in-law (thanks Una!) put a note about them on eBay at about 8 p.m. on the night before the race. At 11:10 p.m. we got a phone call from a desperate husband who’s wife *really* wanted to go and he had been putting thing off until the very last minute – which also happened to be his anniversary. He offered enough to cut our loss to less than half and we made arrangements to meet him north of Oxford which was sort of on our way, kinda. Nevertheless, it was a silver lining of sorts – the tickets didn’t go to waste and we weren’t out a whole lot of money.
Another small consolation was that we were able to cancel our hotel reservations for the weekend and make arrangements to take occupancy of our rented flat in Stirling three days early. It turns out that the current occupants were leaving at 5 a.m. and so we could get the keys when we got there for a small increase over what we had already paid.
Well needless to say we didn’t sleep well and made it to breakfast quite early. Many thanks to the folks at the Ashley Villa Hotel n Bath who were very kind and our room was very nice. We exited early and took care of our ticket trade at a closed gas station north of the M40 outside Oxford – it felt sort of like we were doing a drug deal! (Thanks Jason – I hope you and your wife enjoy the race and cheer for Lewis for us!) Then we headed out for the looooooong trip north. Of course, my spouse is not one to be deterred and please don’t tell
him it should take 8 hours or so to get from Oxford to Stirling. We managed the trip in 6.5 hours in intermittent rain and total downpours with several stops including a quick meal!
We got to Stirling at tea time and Frank headed directly out to see his dad who is not likely to be with us much longer. The kids and I went o the grocery store (with some transportation help from the in-laws since I haven’t practiced this left hand drive stuff yet and today was eally not the best time to start!) and headed back to the flat for some tea and toast, washing and waiting. Eventually we got word that things were a bit better so we headed to the chippy for a few fish suppers and gathered at Frank’s brother Jim’s house for some food and commisseration. The kids enjoyed getting to spend time with their cousins Leah and Matthew and the parents got to catch up on whats going on. There’s not much planning to be done until we talk to the doctors – probably Monday.
/san/
[Pedometer: 5,807 or about 2.5 miles – not bad considering we spent most of our time sitting in cars and chairs.
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