I t was all going so well. Well, no, it wasn't, but it was reasonably okay for a last-minute, designed by the seat-of-its-pants flight schedule.

In something of a surreal state, I got to Leeds/Bradford Airport in plenty of time and even managed to check-in online to avoid the crowds. The plane took off around on-time and got to Amsterdamn with little fuss. The first scene that meets me after arriving in the airport is a big screen of all arrivals and departures - every flight running to time.... except one. Yup. *sigh*

Boarding for the flight from Amsterdamn to Minneapolis was going to be running around 90 minutes late, which the universe having a sense of humo(u)r was exactly the time I would have had to go through Customs and re-check my bags. I knew I had a reasonable seat booked (a bulkhead), but didn't anticpate sharing the row with two big Indian ladies, each with limited English skills and ankle-biter offspring and, it has to be said, little regard for personal space. They asked if I'd move to another seat so their mother could join the party, but I politely refused as I really needed to grab some extra leg-room and a bit of shut-eye. However after much accidental elbowing of me (a Mosby was never meant to be a sandwich) and the delights of seeing one of the kids scream and play with his food in a way I haven't seen since Richard Dreyfuss built a mountain in Close Encounters, I decided to swap with the mother several rows back (after all, she had an aisle row seat anyway). Or she HAD had an aisle row seat... I found out after I agreed to swap that she'd already changed to a middle-of-row seat, so for the rest of the flight I was still sandwiched between people - though thankfully not with the screaming, food-throwing brats, lovely kiddie-winks.