come again another day

Didn't get round to doing everything I'd planned to do today though managed to get to the museum for the free harping - quite good though obviously aimed squarely at tourists and idiots with the "this is a song to attract seals" singalonga-Gaelic business. Whilst I was inside the museum it was bright and warm and sunny but shortly afterwards reverted to nice damp greyness which made the grass in St. Andrew's Square a little on the squelchy side and caused it to change from almost-full (or at least as full as it can be given the limited amount of things to sit on that were provided when it was redeveloped) to almost entirely empty save for the occasional indeterminate person and their little patch of sheltered wall. Popped to some mandolinery a bit later on... also quite good though the sound wasn't particularly suited to the venue and got a little lost amongst the carpets and hanging bits of cloth.

I'd been intending to either walk or bus out to the airport to pick up the male parent then bus back seeing as the buses are there to be used but this week Nicky's had the use of her allotment-sharing colleague's car whilst she's on holiday and insisted upon driving all the way out to the airport then all the way back and she'd already put some petrol in and it would be nicer for my dad and so on despite the fact that 1: driving is unpleasant, especially when unnecessary and 2: the car is full of manky smelly dog hairs and smells mankily of dog and is not a pleasant thing to have to sit in. Luckily the flight was delayed by an hour or so which meant that despite running late I was still able to head off on foot to be collected en route, thus getting some nice exercise and spending less time in a smelly doggy car in one fell swoop though after dumping some shirts for next week in my locker at work I only managed to get as far as the zoo before being caught up.

The other reason for not driving out there when there are buses available is that cars require to be parked somewhere for which money is required on top of the money required to fuel the car for the journey which generally makes the whole enterprise less economical when compared to the bus. Nicky waited in the smelly dog-car at the drop-off point whilst I went inside to compare the up-to-date-ness of the live arrival information board and the equivalent of the same through the internet on my portable telephone whilst debating whether or not to get a coffee for something to do (eventually did) and wondering if it was safe to take pictures. I'd just wandered back over with the coffee to the information board when the through-the-net version beat the live-in-the-airport version by announcing at 21:35 that the flight had landed at 21:24 though the board everyone else was looking at still insisted on an expected arrival time of 21:27. Father was collected, given a small coffee to carry instead of his heavy suitcase to spare him the indignity of having to pull it around on wheels like some sort of weakling and escorted outside whereupon we encountered Nicky at the door with the happy news that the car had picked up a puncture on one of her circles round the set-down area.

Wouldn't have happened if we'd taken the bus.

Luckily the traffic-attending people in attendance were of the relatively nice variety and hadn't ticketed the car after pointing out the presence of the flat. Luckily the spare was present along with the tools. Unluckily I had to sit in the back on the way back which was better in terms of road-fear but far worse in terms of dog-hair and dog-smell. Buses might smell but it's rare after travelling on one to have to immediately launder the travelling-clothes.