When is a plan not a plan?

Got a message overnight saying that the people giving Ottawacker Jr. a ride to his soccer camp weren’t going because of the constant deluge – so up we got at the regular time and I drove him in. It turned out that the reason they weren’t going was because the camp had been cancelled. I, however, hadn’t received the message – either the email or the text – and so when we arrived, we were the only people there. Unimpressed, I drove us back home.
 
Out came the poison pen and within five minutes, I had an apologetic phone call from the camp leader. Part of my issue was that (a) they hadn’t told me… this, it transpires, was because they had managed to transcribe my email address and cell phone number incorrectly. “Is ‘incompetence’ spelled with one or two ‘t’s??, I asked. The second part of my complaint was that they had organized an outdoors camp in the middle of summer but didn’t seem to have a contingency plan for a rain day… “We do have a contingency plan,” he said, “but we decided not to use it, as we thought the kids wouldn’t have a very good time indoors.”
 
“Then, that isn’t a contingency plan,” I said, “in fact, it’s not a plan at all. If you have a plan to replace what you do when the weather is bad and you decide it’s not a good idea, then you haven’t got a contingency plan, you have a ‘crap excuse’.” Leaving him doubtlessly flummoxed by the brilliance of my logic, I hung up.
 
It was easy enough to entertain Ottawacker Jr., though. I took him to lunch with Mitch, and then sat him down in front of a book. In fairness, the weather was really crap, so there wasn’t much else to do. In the evening, the Internationals came within a minute of winning a League game – but gave up a last-minute goal against Ottawa TFC. Most definitely one of those days…