Before I start, the mood in the UK has been a little strange with the death of Queen Elizabeth II. My connections were; my army commission was signed by the queen, and I’d seen her at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party which I’d attended.
She served her country selflessly for 70 years and steered the British Monarchy through a number of crises. She was loved and revered by millions of her subjects. I believe King Charles, while maintaining continuity, will be a different head of state.
He’ll have to navigate the Monarchy through changes in the make-up of the Commonwealth as Commonwealth nations decide whether they wish to continue or leave and no longer have the British Monarch as their head of state. The strangeness for me, visiting the UK has been around the wall-to-wall, blanket television coverage of the funeral, all aspects of it.
I’m writing this article while on vacation in Europe. I’ve been using time on the long-haul flights and when we’ve had down-time as we travel to progress The Silent Revolution. I’m really happy with how this story is panning out.
Also, I’ve received the final edits on Framed. However, the feedback I’ve received from my biggest critic, though positive, has made me delete four chapters and rework the first half of the story. The feedback I received will mean an even better story for you … even though it pushes back the release date due to the additional work. I still plan to release Framed at the end of November, so you’ll see an uptick in emails from me later in October and November as we approach the launch of Framed.
| Woth regards our vacation, we traveled from Wellington, via Auckland to Singapore and then on to Frankfurt. Up until that point, everything had gone smoothly. Our bags were checked through to Prague and all we needed to do in Frankfurt was to have Lufthansa issue our tickets and for us to get to the gate within one and a half hours. We were 3rd off the Singapore Airlines flight and we walked into a wall of people from a previous arrival. |
| After several minutes of no movement, the security doors were opened, and we poured into the main terminal building. We had to pass through a few large queues which snaked in different, chaotic, directions (Passport Control, European Passports / Passport Control, Non-European Passports / Security for passengers heading to gates within this terminal). We found the Lufthansa Service Desk (which looked under-staffed) and joined the queue. As we watched our time tick down, our stress levels rose. Once we had our boarding passes, we quickly joined the long queue for Non-European Passports. Time appeared to slow down. The people in front had problems with their paperwork, others struggled to answer the officials’ questions. Again, time ticked on and our stress levels rose further. Clear of Immigration we upped our pace searching for the gate we needed as we ran. Gate A50 sounded a long way away. Another security checkpoint greeted us. This time our boarding passes gave us a fast-track. However, each of our trays triggered an alert which meant a security inspection. The body scanners tripped on both of us too. Frankfurt Airport was conspiring against us. Clear of the security checkpoint we repacked as we ran. Over the airport Tanoy we could hear the final boarding announcements for our flight to Prague and we still had no idea where Gate A50 was. Moments later we saw the gate in the distance, ran to it and scanned our boarding passes. We moved down the empty airbridge to find ourselves outside and climbing onto a waiting bus which picked up one or two more stragglers before pulling away. It took us past the cargo centre and to our waiting Airbus. After storing our baggage in the overhead bin and strapping into our seats, we took off. Only now did our stress levels drop as the sweat dripped off us. |
| We were traveling to Prague where Cathy has family who she’d not previously met. So, to prepare, Cathy has been learning Czech. We had great company as we explored Prague and Pilsen for a few days. We found time for country walks. foraging for mushrooms, a visit to the Bohemia sparkling wine facility and the Pilsen Urquell brewery which were both well worth the visit. |
| The above picture is from the 4 miles of tunnels which were hand carved by the brewery workers to store and keep the beer cool before the advent of modern refrigeration systems. Next, we flew to Manchester and hired a car to get around the UK visiting relatives and friends. We had looked into taking trains, however, with so many strikes in Britain, including the railway network, we decided on the hire car option. We’d read and seen many stories about air travel disruption across Europe and the UK, we were worried about cancelled flights and lost luggage. However, our main objective was to be in Cardiff for Cathy’s father’s 85th birthday, which fell towards the latter part of our holiday. Hence, any disruption would be an inconvenience, but not a showstopper for the main event in Cardiff. We like Cardiff for many reasons and always enjoy returning to meet Cathy’s family and some friends from our past. Below are some photos from Cardiff. |
Our next stop on our vacation is Shrewsbury, then a short flight to Amsterdam for a few days in The Netherlands. I’ll cover this off in my next posting for October.