Trains, planes, tubes but no automobiles

Hectic weekend, never to be repeated in that fashion. We left home at 05h30 on Saturday morning to catch an 08h00 flight to Gatwick. All went well, we even ended up chatting to a South African guy while waiting to board and ended up sitting with him on our flight too. We had organised a hire car because getting to Adrian and Nicky seemed like a lot of work, on and off trains and tubes and 2h30 journey times. On the plane my brain suddenly sprung to attention and I asked Malcolm if he had brought his drivers' licence...obviously the answer was NO. When I travel I tend to remove cards and any other useless paraphernalia from my wallet, and so it happened that my pink drivers licence lay on my bedside table as we winged our way across the Irish sea. Ever hopeful we still went to Europcar in the vain hope that they might still be able to help, perhaps they would forget to ask for a licence...I had even taken my sat nav along and in true positive spirit turned it on and entered our destination. Sadly none of my actually helped and we found ourselves standing at the Gatwick train station working out how to get to our destination. I was very proud of the way I handled it, no moaning and groaning, I did not get angry (just walked behind M shaking my head, muttering under my breath and giving him killer looks) I also went to the journey planner guy and asked him if he could reverse our route so that we arrived back at Gatwick at 11:30 the next morning, good under pressure moi ;)
And so we found ourselves dashing from train to tube and back to train until 12:30 when we finally reached our destination.
Champagne was opened lots of talking ensued peppered with more people arriving and so the fun began. We went out for lunch - at 16h00, by then I was ravenous as all I had eaten was half a sandwich and a banana, lunch was well received by my roaring belly. After that it was back to the hotel, the menfolk stayed at the pub, more wine for the ladies while I watched the hairdresser style their hair and then I snuck off for a snooze. (Exhausted as Friday night managed the grand total of 4 hours sleep)
The party was fun, there was a roulette and black jack table, I stuck to black jack and spent much time squandering my chips, very easy when it is not REAL money! There was also a dj so spent a bit of time on the dance floor too, popping over to the buffet of snacks for energy once in a while!
The party wound up at around 01h00 and we all walked back to the hotel and had a night cap in the hotel bar, I eventually admitted defeat at 02h00 - I was EXHAUSTED and snuck off to bed. Sadly woke up at 06h30 in the morning WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? Packed our things up, woke M at 07h30 and we got ready to leave, checked out at 08h0, had a quick breakfast in the hotel restaurant -VERY quiet at that time of the morning and at 08h30 hopped in our taxi to get to the train station. Train, tube, train and finally back at Gatwick. Plane delayed for 20 minutes so much sitting around...thank goodness for "This Charming Man" by Marian Keyes, kept me sane and I managed to finish it too, sorry people but chick lit rules! Everyone mocks it but pure escapism and what a fantastic book, think it might be her best work yet, it was worth the wait!!!
Finally arrived back in Dublin at 16h30, then had to drive back to our friends and pick up the kids, Got home close to sick, SHATTERED. Walked to Supervalu - got dinner things and fruit for Kirstin's school lunch, back home where I made a chicken a la king - a woman's work is never done!!! Collapsed into bed at 22h30, comatose until the alarm went off at 07h00 this morning...aarrgghh