Dear readers, sorry I dropped out of circulation for a while there. It has been a pretty busy, not to say, stressful month. I had to make a guerilla visit to Florence on a mission of mercy. Yes, I know: if you have to go on a mercy mission, Florence is not a bad destination. Stay with me. Firstly, the mission involved shopping, all day, every day. Can I just mention how much I loathe, abhor, and detest shopping? Words cannot convey my horror when I realise I need to spend ages shopping. Suffice it to say that all my Christmas shopping is done in one day, and by one day, I mean two hours. And yes, I do buy excellent prezzies, thank you! Basically, I shop like my Dad. A bit of a conundrum for a would-be shopkeeper, you say. Mais non, mes ami. I love setting up shops, I love merchandising, I love visiting shops. I just don’t want to spend 8 hours shopping, that’s all. Am I being unreasonable? Considering the fact that most of the shopping was in Prada, Moschino, Versace, Trussardi etc etc, some would say yes. But, seeing as I was scouting goods for someone else who would then decide what to buy after much peregrination, all I can say is, ‘this must be the ninth circle of hell’ I never want to buy another designer bag until I stop having ‘Nam-style flashbacks about the charmless girls at Prada (with one very noticeable exception who behaved like an actual human being, and was wearing a kickass shade of red lipstick from Lancome into the bargain- it’s the little things 🙂 )

It all started so well. I got to Stansted two hours before the flight, dropped my case and generally mooched about for a while. I didn’t even have hand luggage- travel nirvana. Checked the board, saw the departure gate and I was off. Till I got to the totally deserted set of gates. No flight on the boards, no one to ask. No biggie, I’ll go back to the terminal and check. Did you know you can’t go back to the terminal using the transit train at Stansted? Me neither. Some thick- as- mince designer or engineer decided that once you were on that train, you could only go to departure gates with no way of getting back to the main terminal. Pazzo, as we Florentines say. OK, I’m a seasoned traveller and I’ve still got 45 minutes to spare. I went to the only other stop, asked the Ryanair check-in lady closing a flight that had just departed if she could check which gate the Pisa flight is departing from. She looked me straight in the eye and told me she had no access at all to Ryanair’s departure gate info. ‘Go and use the phone on the wall a few gates down to ask security’ The dimwit at the other end of the phone told me they’d put the wrong gate info up, it should be 41 not 11. I’d have to wait to be collected by security with all the others who’d been misled. I must make sure I don’t deviate from the designated route as that would be a security risk. ” Oh, thank you, Ossifer. Wooah, was that a drone?” Just saying, s’all…… 🙂 Security chap comes up, labyrinthine trip through the bowels of Stansted airport ensues and we exit at gate….93. My plane leaves from gate 41. I have 15 minutes before takeoff, assuming they hadn’t closed the gate already. Mad pelt run to gate 41 to find….Ryanair flight to Bratislava. You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh. Thank God it wasn’t my first rodeo. Turns out the gate was actually 45; the dimwit had got it wrong. Thanks to priority boarding, I sat in my seat 7 minutes before the scheduled take-off. However, surely God is good to Israel (Psalm 73, if you must know), and also to Alara (not necessarily in the Bible as such….) because I had the aisle seat and the other two remained empty so I stretched out for the entire journey, ignoring the envious glances of my fellow travellers, and we were off. Landing safely in Florence, the day did not improve. TBC.

PS: favourite headline from sunday’s front pages- “100 easy steps to total mind and body happiness”. I first misread it as 10 steps and was already ridiculing it. Then I realised it was 100 steps. 100!!!! I laughed like a drain. If I were the kind of maniac who could follow 100 steps of anything (easy or otherwise), I would already be the Empress of the Universe and some minion would be buying my paper for me as I would be too posh to shop. Now if they said “3 easy steps”, I might at least be guaranteed to get to number 2. Brainiacs!