It's been a strange day.
Firstly we had the prospect of having to be out of the apartment by 10am and the girls all wanting to be the last one to get up and use the bathroom.
Following on from this they were all in bad moods and not being overly helpful. One of them actually got so disrespectful that they suffered the sanction of losing not one, not two but three weeks pocket money.
Add in the drama from home via Blackberry Messenger that one of the girls friends went missing and frantic phone messages from my Mum that she couldn't get in to feed the cat as she didn't have the Chubb lock key (animal lovers rest easy - all is now well thanks to a locksmith and no actual pets were harmed in the writing of this blogpost) and the morning was starting out a bit stressy.
Then the taxi driver who turned up to take us to Dawn's parents (via the Hertz car rental depot) couldn't fit all of us plus luggage in his cab. This was particularly annoying as I had specifically asked for a large cab that would take 6 passengers and 6 cases. However, try as he might he could not fit the cases in and try as we might we could not persuade him to take us and leave the children to fend for themselves (joking - but very tempting at the time). So we did the only decent thing and let him take the children plus the luggage to David and Moira's (Dawn's parents) place and we made our own way on foot to the Hertz depot.
Having produced my "Paid in full" receipt for the Ford Mondeo plus insurance excess waiver and additional driver, I was told that I had only REQUESTED the additional driver, not paid for it (why would I do that?) and the waiver was only valid via the booking agent Travel Jigsaw so if we did have a problem we would have to pay the full excess to Hertz of £750 and then claim it back. Oh joy.
The agent took us to our car and having booked a Mondeo, I was perhaps foolishly expecting to see a Mondeo. Not a Nissan Qashqai. "They're very similar" the agent said. Well, they have an engine, 4 wheels and... that's about it. There is no way that size-wise they are similar.
We also had a built in Sat Nav that gave us helpful directions, such as "You will bear right soon" and "Try and make a U turn" when we were going along a dual carriageway. The wing mirrors had lives of their own and every time the car stopped they folded in and needed to be manually pushed back out again.
And all this before 11:30 in the morning.
Still, we managed to spread the kids and the luggage across both ours and David's car and set off for Polmaily Steading. Glorious weather dispelled the myth that the Highlands is always wet in August and the further north we went, the more dramatic and beautiful the scenery became.
Travelling is pretty tiring and by the time our errant Sat Nav had taken us to the wrong place where we were cornered for 10 minutes by a lone dog who must have thought we were a herd of sheep, we were pretty darn tired.
But our work was not done as we still had to do shopping, cooking and washing and sadly the childrens behaviour did not particularly improve; they have even driven Dawn's brother to drink for the first time in three years, so I sense a difficult week ahead.
And to cap it all, the jewel in the crown. Someone has apparently found Nessie and has published pictures that appear in todays press apparently showing absolute proof that the Loch Ness Monster exists. Was there a head in this picture? No. Were there any signs of fins or teeth? No. Did it look like an upturned rowing boat floating in the Loch? A bit.
Loch Ness monster found?
I'm not giving up hope.
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