When I started to write this post, I was at the Newcastle airport for the first leg of my trip home after another two weeks in the UK. It had been a busy visit. We worked on the images for my 'The Birds' book, and got a sweet vintage dresser for my room. We also both got sick with the same bad cough, just like any other couple, and spent much of the time simply hanging out and living together. I baked a few ginger cakes and a loaf of bread, and made pasta puttanesca twice. Speaking of food, we went to South Shields which is across the river from my beloved Tynemouth to check out the dunes and carnival fairground and had lunch at The Marine (https://the-marine.co.uk/) which I highly recommend if you happen to find yourself there. All of this was in the original draft of this post I was writing in the airport, along with how I finished Oskar the owl painting I brought with me to work on and bought the paint I needed once I arrived. Anyway, there I was, sitting in the Newcastle airport writing in my notebook and waiting for the departure board to post my gate. I had a really tight window between arriving in Amsterdam and catching my Boston flight and too much time was passing. Eventually I headed downstairs to wait at the general gate area. By the time the flight details were posted, it was an hour and a half late. The reason being that as my plane’s incoming flight landed in Newcastle, a passenger on it suffered a heart attack and an ambulance needed to be called. The other passengers were not allowed to disembark until the paramedics worked their magic and took the patient away. Once the plane was empty, it had to be cleaned, hence the delay. And then, since almost all of my fellow passengers were going to Amsterdam to catch other flights that we had now missed, the service desk was a mob scene. Luckily, Expedia, who I book flights with, had already lined me up with a new Boston flight, but alas, it was for the following morning. I was given a room and meal vouchers at a hotel nearby and then spent an hour I’ll never get back in Passport Control with several hundred anxious Chinese travelers just to get out of the building. By the time I checked into the hotel, the buffet they provided was slim pickings. I did have a nice shower and slept ok however, and was up at the crack of dawn for a decent breakfast and was on the shuttle back to the airport soon enough. Have you been to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport? It is HUGE and very confusing. But as I was already checked in, all I had to do was get in an enormous line to be scanned by security and then use my remaining meal voucher at Starbucks. So to make a long and tedious story a little bit shorter, 36 hours after I’d left for the Newcastle airport, my Provincetown friend picked me up from the Logan shuttle drop-off in Barnstable, a two hour bus ride, and then after another hour’s drive, delivered me home. These trips seem to be getting harder, although this was still not as bad as that fiasco in Heathrow in February. Perhaps I’ll go less often from now on and stay longer until I move there for good. Onward.