So yesterday ended brilliantly, with the petrol flowing like wine, like asses milk, like golden honey, into the cars. Preceded by Miele-gate. Mel’s absolute best friend in the whole world was broken. I could be her bff, possibly her identical twin sister to whom she speaks 14 times each day. But no. Her washing machine is the thing she really loves, the one she misses when we’re away, and always her first love. Til the fucker broke last week. And although its 12 years old, it is the absolute 600AMG, V10, M-Class, Bugatti Veyron of clothes cleaners. And at the airport yesterday we learned of its fixage. It’s all better. Ready for another 10 years. Mel was in tears.

But the day was not without its stresses.

Berlin has airport issues. Or, flughof issues, as they call them over there. Because Berlin had two airports. An old shitty one really close to the centre, which everyone loved because of its proximity and forgave its shitty rustiness. The other was miles away. Or, ‘kilometres away’ as they call it in Germany. And equally horrible. But wait! Right next door to the shitty, old, far-away one, is another one which we built 10 years ago and completely forgot about. It’s never been used, like, EVER. Dust it off, close the other two and we can be a proper International City with a ‘hub’.

Its an hour away from the daughter. 45 minutes on a good day. Yesterday wasn’t a good day. We walked to the local train station (5 minutes), got on the local train which would take us just 5 stops to the big station where you get the direct, fast, super-train to the airport (20 minutes). What could possibly go wrong.

The little local train went one stop and then, amid a lot of German words and announcements I didn’t understand, all was basically ‘kaput’. A word I do understand. So there we are, somewhere we don’t know where, 4 stops short of our next destination, in fucking Germany. So God bless Uber. It came within 1 minute and whizzed us to the big station and we made it to the airport in good time.

Well, it would have been good time if the Brandenburg Flughof was worthy of its name. But it is just useless, unfriendly in that there are so few direction signs, and ridiculously under-manned. The ‘good time’ became ‘last minute panic’ as the lovely woman at security was repackaging our less-than-100-ml bottles into nicer plastic bags than they were already in. As every item from carry on has to go into its own tray. Oh nein, you can’t put your belt in with your jacket!!! That’s how 9-11 started!!! Fuck me it was agony. And just two scanner desks operating out of 6. Hair was pulled out, obscenities whispered beneath smiling faces, sweat profused.

Then, of course the flight was half hour delayed anyway, obviously.

But its sooooooo stressful. And needn’t be.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx