The parents and the volcano

My parents finally got home today after the trauma of a 7 day volcano induced delay. It must have been a terrible experience, but wait hold your sympathy until you know the facts:
- They went for a 2 week all inclusive holiday, the second week was a Nile cruise
- They were due to fly back on day 1 of the ash issue
- They went with a good holiday company, go on then I'll share, Virgin
- Virgin kept them on the boat and sailed back to the start
- They then repeated the cruise on an all inclusive basis while waiting for the ash to clear
- They flew home a week late
- Total cost of the week of ash based air space closure = £150
- Worst bit = the ships entertainment was the same as the week before :0(

During their extended holiday my phone was nominated as ash crisis hot-line. The parents sent me texts and I had to update the extended family. Everyone else was put out that they hadn't had direct contact. I will have my largest ever home phone bill due to the time required to discuss the ins and outs of a 9 word text. Seriously how many ways can you interpret "Still on boat, all OK, don't know when home"?

My brother thinks the volcano erupted just to inconvenience him. There was a possibility that on a Friday night he would have to look after his own son. This would have been especially bad because he has a date. His suggestions for preventing the interruption to his over active dating / sex life was for me to take today off work, drive 200 miles to collect his son from school and babysit until Saturday evening! He complained that he can't babysit on Friday night, had to point out it's not baby sitting if it's your own child, it's parenting.

Fortunately the parents arrived back in time to save the day!

Lesson in here somewhere, it might be to book holidays with quality companies and not Jock's last minute expeditions who will leave you to sort yourself out during an act of God.