Lock out

I figured I needed to leave at 2:30 pm today to catch my 6 pm flight today (bus into town, shuttle bus to airport, arrive 2 hours early). I had a lot of things going on with work, but I thought I’d be OK, even though I hadn’t packed. However. Paddy vomited yesterday afternoon and again this morning—Paddy hasn’t been a vomiter up until now, so this has me worried. I went to Spar and got chicken and rice, made them for him, and he didn’t eat it. Now I’m really worried. I call my neighbour the vet and she said not to feed him. Let his stomach calm down and see how he’s doing tomorrow.

I ran to the bank to get some cash and to the drug store for eye drops. When I came home around noon, I discovered I have locked myself out of the house. I didn’t take my keys b/c I always leave the back door unlocked. Except for today. Paddy had been digging at the back door and I had the bright idea that if it were locked, it would have less give/be less tempting. The only window open was a transom window high in the conservatory. I put a chair on a table on the back patio and tried and failed to climb through the window. I went to a neighbour’s and beckoned a skinny teenage boy to try. He tried to go in head first, which doesn’t work, and me and another teenager couldn’t float him up to go in feet first.

Next idea. Up to Alec and Louise to see if they have David’s number. They aren’t home. I don’t have my phone and I don’t have David’s number memorised. My neighbours Michael and Faye are out of town, so I can’t access the spare key. Next idea, down to Helen’s, whose daughter works at City Quays, where David works. I thought she could find him and have him come home. First we tried reaching my pet sitter, who has a key. But Helen isn’t on Facebook, so I couldn’t message the pet sitter through her Facebook page, which doesn’t list her phone number. Next I call the London office of David’s company. They patch me through to the Belfast office. No one answers. I try London again, this time I get David and ask him to come home. For the next 40 minutes, I study patterns in squares of cloth on Helen’s living room floor—the raw material for a quilt she’s making. The complex patterns in each square are oddly calming. David gets home not long after 1 pm. I send a lot of emails, finish packing, and try to get my head around this journey. I decide to take a taxi to the airport to win me back some time. Once at the airport, the flight is delayed multiple times. At Liverpool Airport, two hours late, the car rental guy can’t get his computer to work for 30 minutes. I leave the airport in my rental car at 9 pm—the time at which I should have arrived at my final destination, two hours away in Snowdonia National Park in North Wales.

So far today I’ve dealt with a sick dog, a demanding boss, a locked-up house, and multiple flight delays. Now I have to drive a strange car at night in a strange country with a strange llangguage. In occasionally heavy rain. I kept saying to myself, this is why I never go anywhere. An hour into my trip, I wondered if anyone would be at the National Trust lodge to let me in? I call David for the number (I’m not good with searches on my phone). I speak to a woman who is locking up the lodge in a half hour. I’m an hour away. She says she’ll leave my key in an envelope with instructions on how to find the room. An hour later, after winding up and down many roads through villages and across narrow bridges in Snowdonia, I arrive at Craflwyn Hall. Bless dear little Anna’s heart, she stayed late to escort me to my room. A good bloody thing as the steep slate stairs behind the main lodge up to the stables are more like slope-every-which-way stairs, not easy in the rain with luggage. Different heights, widths, angles to horizontal...

I can’t believe I made it in one piece. The Google maps narration on my phone absolutely saved my bacon. I had printed out two pages of directions from the airport to Craflwyn Hall, but I never would have been able to read them in the dark zooming down the North Wales Expressway at 70 mph or on the back roads of Snowdonia. I ended my day with deep gratitude to Helen, David, Anna, and Google narration. Cozy in my bed I counted my blessings, among them that I so often lie in bed and count my blessings.

Here is part of the stable block:

And here is Craflwyn Hall from the stables.

April 26