The Best Laid Plans

It's funny how things turn out. This blog, for example, was never meant to end up as a kind of diary, and yet look at it now, a regular catalogue of the things going on in my life, one way or another. Another is the birthday present of a friend. Actually, this friend has been mentioned on here quite a few times - it's theone who's getting married.

It was her birthday back in June, and she's a nightmare to shop for at the best of times. This time was even harder, since everybody was holding back a couple of good ideas to use as wedding presents later this year - also a hard ask. Another friend and I decided to band together and get her something girly and fun. Not easy. she wa so preoccupied by her wedding plans that she couldn't offer any suggestions herself, so we took that as our inspiration and created our own present - a wedding-free day. We'd take her out for a pamper session, a meal and drinks. It was all presented as a booklet that we made, giving her a choice of location (she chose local), type of night out (drinks and a boogie), variety of pampering (masssage - a good choice, since we also shout ourselves whatever she gets!) and the meal (lunch). She seemed to genuinely like the idea, once it was explained to her. Then she went off on holidays with her fiance and his family and promptly forgot all about it.

It's only this weekend that we finally get our chance to give her the present - most unlike her. Normally, she jumps at the chance to be the centre of attention, and the "no speaking about the wedding" injunction seems to be needed as well. Even though we've had to split the plans across 2 days (technically, it's still the same 24 hours, though) to work around her hectic schedule (we counted how many times we've beenable to get together without it involving family, wedding, or gym this year; we could count the times on one hand, and three of those were our own birthdays) we've all been looking forward to this since it was locked in stone 2 weeks back. I mean how often do you get to have a night out followed by pampering for a day, and no responsibilities? It's a dream, and we don't even have to go more than 10 minutes from home to do it, since the locations are all within a block of each other, and at a point that is roughly the same distance from each of our homes.

But, as the saying goes, the best laid plans can be laid to waste, and all through what seems to be an environmental issue. I'm asthmatic. No big surprises there, since almost everyone in Australia these days seems to have some kind of respiratory problem (but has anyone found out the reason why this is? Oh no, let's spend our tax dollars on a billion dollar advertising campaign to make the public forget that they hate the archaic new industrial relations laws, for example. I'm firly mild and haardly ever need to do anything about it, except take a preventer every morning. If I do that, I'm generally fine to do whatever I want, so much so that I don't really carry any medication with me anymore. So it came as a bit of a surprise today that I needed it - needed it enough to have to go out and buy some. Even bigger surprise that I wasn't the only one in this office to need it. Innocent enough in itself, and any other day, I wouldn't really mind. But tonight is not any other night. I was planning to go to a smokey pub and have a few drinks tonight, neither of which is easy when you're having breathing issues and have pumped yoruself with enough salbutamol to give you a fair dose of the shakes - it doesn't improve your chances of getting into the bar in the first place, given what the shakes can do to your coordination!

Longer term, other plans are suffering from other minor issues at the moment - clearly, issues of far less importance, as will become clear, than the fate of my night out with the girls. London - and by association, the US - is again under what the media keeps describing as a terrorist cloud, thanks to some people who thought it would be a good idea to plan to blow a few planes out of the sky over the Atlantic. There are many comments I could make about those people, but I think I'll refrain, since it does nobody any good to pass comment on the beliefs of others - you'll never convince them to think otherwise, generally speaking, and neither will they convince you. The upshot is that people are now unable to take carry-on luggage on flights out of Heathrow, unless it is their passport and ticket, in a clear plastic bag. Given the tiny amounts of whatever the substance was that the media say was required to make a bomb, You have to wonder if that's going to be quite as effective as they'd hoped. Whatever, it has messed with at least one of my plans in a big way. I have a large - alright, very large, enormous, could-fit-me-in-it size - case to take when I go on my big trip. I'm looking at having to pay an excessive amount of excess baggage just to be allowed on the plane. That amount has just increased fivefold, since I had planned to take things that are easily broken (and also quite heavy) on the plane as carry-on. Things you wouldn't want in your checked baggage like, oh, I don't know, a laptop, a book to read on the TWENTY THREE HOUR flight...and apart from that, any other items I might need in the course of the next 2 years that I won't be able to fit into the 20kg limit - which I'm tipping will be quite a lot. And now these terrorists have to go and spoil it all...I might just indulge in conspiracy theories here - or rather tales of dire coincidences. You see, my first solo overseas trip landed in London on October 5 2001 - within a month of September 11. My second trip to the UK was only a little more after the tube/bus bombings. I'd commented only Tuesday (Wednesday?) night that it was about the right time for something to happen in the terrorist way, since I was heading overseas again soon. And now, here we are...spooky, huh! It seems that there is a giant conspiracy to either keep me out of the UK (not going to happen, I'm afraid. I love it too much over there) or make sure that I never have to line up for any attraction (yes, that's right, I'm one of the few people to turn up at the Eiffel Tower at about 2pm and not have to queue AT ALL - I just walked straight up to a ticket window. Similar experiences all through Europe and the UK.) - or alternatively, it's jsut a way of making sure I can't smuggle in all the jars of vegemite and packets of tim tams and iced vo-vos destined to be traded for couch space once in London. I'm sure that's what it's all about. And once again, thebest laid plans...