Departure

Two contacts this morning that served to turn my world on its head.  The first, a friend who lost his incredibly short fight with cancer overnight.  Such dreadful news and so incredibly sad that such a beautiful man has been lost far too soon.

The second  was a call from niece K's employers in Australia.  She's only been there a few weeks and was loving the adventure.  We'd talked about me being listed as her 'Emergency contact' as I'm so much closer to Australia than her immediate family.  'Of course you can put me down as your emergency contact' I remember saying to her, never thinking I would ever be contacted.  How wrong we both were to think such a thing.  After the call I attempted to call F - 1.30am in UK.......family phones all turned off for the night......frustration......anger.....tears.....then finally a response.  I hope I never, ever have to make a call like that again.  The call was the trigger for all of us to start the frantic job of booking flights to get to Melbourne......me to get there as quickly as possible from NZ, F, H & S to get there as quickly as possible from the other side of the world.  Little did we know at the time that some global Microsoft system had gone down today causing delays, lack of information and a stalling of many systems.  As we all know though, where there's a will, there's a way and we just had to find our ways...

I managed to get to Wellington by the evening, staying at the airport hotel so I could make the 6.00am departure for Melbourne.......