Just my luck!!! When did the damn Islamic terrorists decide to bomb planes? Why should you ask a question which such an obvious answer? The day before I was flying to the US, of course.

Yesterday morning my father woke me up by an early phone call from home to tell me that any hand luggage must be stored in clear plastic bags because there was a terrorist attempt in Heathrow. Partly because I was still a bit shaky from the previous (birthday) drinking night, and partly because I was still asleep I didn’t register any major concerns and went to work as usual. It soon hit me that the situation was disastrous as everybody in the office stared at me as if I just turned white as I opened the office door. Flights from Ireland to London were being cancelled as well as several flights leaving from Heathrow. To cut a long story short I spent the whole day deciding whether to risk flying to LAX on Friday or not. The problem is that with cancelled flights on Thursday people will need to be reallocated on the following days which leaves no chance for flying on standby. At the end I decided that the least risky path to avoid remaining uselessly stranded in London was to delay the trip to NZ by a week. A very very shitty day indeed.

This means that I’m going to spend my birthday in Ireland after I celebrated it prematurely last Wednesday. It’s probably going to be one of the worst birthdays to date. At least I’m getting some birthday boy treatment at work having my mates singing happy birthday and taking me out to lunch. I took a chocolate gateau in return.

Some stories for future reference:

• UK raises threat level to critical
• Passengers face disruptions
• Travellers braced for day of woe
• Agent infiltrated terror cell