Hestia's bad day....Tartarus's worse one

Yes, I know that I have been woefully slow at getting the hilarity that was our Isle of Man holiday up here on the blog, but I haz an excuse.....

.....the first one being that Tartarus, whose brain cells are obviously being raddled by too much motorbike racing on the telly and mugs of strong tea, didn't realise that his seaman's ticket expires when he is out in Mexico working next month.  This presents a MASSIVE headache for his company.

When did he notice this was a problem? The day before we left to go on holidays.


Oh my, he was a barrel of laughs for about four days!

Not.



Cue:  Mad and frantic phone calls to his office, to the MCA and to his ship - where his long-suffering back to back colleague agreed to do another few days if the ticket failed to come through before his due departure date.

Departure date was supposed to be Tuesday, but no ticket had arrived and thus we were graced with his snappy and anxious presence for another few days.

Then yesterday it was suddenly ALL GO.

Yesterday afternoon his flight details came through and he left on the 8am ferry this morning.

Unfortunately, he phoned me at 8pm this evening from Amsterdam.  Reader, let me assure you that he should have been winging his way over the Atlantic with his little knuckles wrapped around a lukewarm beer by that point.

His flight had arrived late and Amsterdam Airport had been in the grip of some torrential rain...and loads and loads of flights had failed to leave the tarmac.  Reader, he queued for four and a half hours at the KLM desk to try to get onto the flight to JFK, but by the time he got to the front of the queue to try to get himself on it, the JFK plane had been airborne for 2 hours.

His mood was not good.  There was absolutely no-one else at KLM to speak to about getting to work.  No more flights to the US today.  Where could he get a hotel?

The KLM lady pointed him to another queue in which he waited another 2 hours for hotel details.  Eventually he gave up and went out and booked The Hilton.  And from there he phoned me - sounding weary beyond his years.  He doesn't even fancy going out and bringing a prostitute back to take his mind off things.

My day has not gone much better.

I am in the final stages of preparing for the annual Tarot Conference that TABI runs.  And while it is a lot of work and a fair bit of worry, this year I have refused to get stressed about anything....and am determined just to enjoy it. And it was all going rather well.

Until today.

Late this afternoon, one of my keynote speakers frantically emailed me to say that they were double-booked and that the other event couldn't be changed!  My guts literally turned to iced water.

Still, I have managed to juggle around the other speakers to ensure that this speaker CAN still provide their workshop.  But I've also had to notify the attendees who were coming along for just the day.  Will they still want to come with the shuffled itinerary?  I don't know.  I hope so *shrug*.  It's still going to be EPIC.  I'm still trying to hang on to not being stressed!

Part of the Saturday night's entertainment is me interviewing one of my Tarot artist heros live In The Building (after exchanging e-mails for a couple of years) plus interviewing another Tarot author live via skype from his home in San Fransisco.  Not only will the technology and I be at loggerheads, but he's a well-known actor and I suspect I might do the 'Lauren Bacall Thing' again with both of artist and author.

The 'Lauren Bacall Thing' was when this supremely elegant actress was doing a book signing in Glasgow and I had stored up some probing questions to ask her about her career ......only to turn into a manically grinning arsehole when I got to stand in front of her.  Instead of some cutting edge questions, I just managed to  mumble 'I think you're great,' before shuffling off.  Presumably to my padded cell.

Piers Morgan I am not.

I am now off to lie down in a darkened room.  Things could be worse - I could be trying to get to Mexico.