It's all up in the air

Do you know the joke about the boy who has to complete a rites of passage ceremony to prove himself a man, its an old one but still makes me laugh. He has to perform two tasks, to kill a grizzly bear and make love to a virgin. Off he goes into the wood and comes back some time later totally dishevelled, bruised and bleeding 'done that' he says ' now where's this virgin you want killing?' Its been a bit like that for me this week, getting ready to go away, planting seeds, potting on, weeding, doing the laundry, planning a small carry on case of clothes to last ten days, selecting suitable sock knitting and reading plus sanding down the balcony handrail to allow the wood to dry out before re-varnishing. And possibly all in vain because since Thursday all flights in and out of Scotland have been cancelled due to ash in the atmosphere from an erupting volcano in Iceland. We were due to fly to Rome at 6.30 am on Sunday, currently Ryanair say all flights are cancelled until mid day Monday though strangely they have allowed us to re-book our Sunday flight to the Monday 6 am one.

We had planned to fly to Rome and drive to Tuscany to spend a couple of days with our friends there, the husband is already in Italy and the wife was to fly out this morning from Edinburgh to Pisa. She has re-booked to fly to Rome with us on Monday so we can all drive to Tuscany. I can't see it happening but Mr FF is optimistic and I'd like to be proved wrong. His first reaction yesterday when we heard that our Sunday flight was off was that we should drive the 7 or 8 hours down to Dover today, catch a ferry and drive the 2 days to Tuscany, but the girls weren't up for that.

Anyway, at least I finished the little cardy to take to Italy for new baby Lara and fortunately it's size up to 12 months, just as well as she could be considerably older by the time we see her. The garden is looking great, we have family coming up from Yorkshire today who would have house sat but may find themselves spending time with us instead. At least we are not stranded in some airport, many people have been trying to get home since Thursday and apparently received no help at all from the airlines. On the downside the weather has turned cooler and there is some snow forecast, just goes to show that you can't do anything about nature. Now where's this volcano you want me to cap?