The Holiday 1. Other people’s holiday photos

Not sure what’s happened on my blog – I am seeing a blank space where my previous posts should be. Don’t know if this should happen or is easily fixed. Experienced bloggers out there who know typepad – is this a simple glitch or have I done something wrong?

Just returned late last night from our holiday at Lake Garda. A detailed itinerary of places visited, people met, photos of places you haven’t been and people you haven’t met, you don’t need. Nor do you want to know the Kafkaesque pantomime of trying to board a plane at Verona airport when there is only one departure lounge with space for 300 people, which is already filled with 500 people waiting for long-delayed flights (to Dublin and Heathrow), and in the meantime three otherflights with hundreds of other people are pushed through security to stand in a corridor for over an hour, with no information, no water, no air conditioning working, and outside temperatures of 35 degrees. And you don’t need to know the inner dialogues and imaginary conversations I was having with the airport security, the airport manager, Ingham’s, the Italian Government – it is hard to live wittily surrounded by anxious sweaty returning holidaymakers, squeezed tighter than sardines into a place where you can’t go back or forward, and listening to increasingly strident complaints answered by decreasingly interested airport staff with shoulder shrugs and firm instructions to stay where we are. No you don’t need to know any of this – but it helps to talk, the catharsis of a typepad and the sympathy of friends!

All of which said, good holiday, and now back to see what all needs to be done to rebuild life in the real world. The first thing to notice is the sheer misery of people down south coping with flooded homes and inundated communities. Makes a difficult couple of hours in an airport a trivial matter of inconvenience and post holiday debility syndrome, and resolved albeit in a festival of disorganisation and non-communication. Watching the late news of folk in danger from floodwater, and their homes under feet if not metres of water, my heart went out to them, and I will pray for them in church today.