Update.

OK so right now I reallllllly need to remain positive.

My flight to New York was cancelled.

Thanks to the snow on the weekend Heathrow has been running a reduced service and flights had to be diverted to other airports. There are people at the airport who have been there since Saturday. That’s now 4 nights of sleeping at an airport! I’m guessing these people just really want to get to their final destinations.

I can totally relate.

I honestly (naively?) didn’t think this was going to affect us. There hasn’t been any proper snow since the weekend and what was left behind is melting away. I heard many stories of friend’s grandparents flying home or their parents making it to Barbados on Monday. We checked the exact same Virgin Atlantic flight to New York today; it was delayed but IT LEFT! Plus, they opened up another of the closed runways today. So everything looked good.

I happily got to packing (throwing mass amounts of clothing on to my floor) thinking it was all fine and dandy. Until my sister called to let me know our flight was cancelled. The other Virgin Atlantic flights to New York were ok, it’s just our time of day. I spoke to someone from Virgin called Ashley Harrison, he was incredibly nice. I mean, his job must suck realllly bad right now. Apparently over 750 flights have been cancelled, so you can imagine he’s probably spoken to a few stressed out people! But he was very nice with me, even laughed when I told him to kick someone else off another flight to New York so I could have their seat (umm I was serious Ashley Harrison!), and explained to me what my options were.

So where do I go from here? We have been booked onto the next available flight to New York with Virgin. This is next Wednesday, the 29^th of December. Yep, 4 days AFTER Christmas. We would be happy to fly anywhere else into the US and then make our way to New York from the there. The next available flight into the US with Virgin? Tuesday the 28^th in Washington. Not great. We are entitled to a full refund so we have continued looking for other flights; we just want to get to America! I will hitchhike from Boston if it means getting there! This has not been that easy. We got to the stage of having put in all the credit card details into an Air Canada flight to Boston so that we could continue our journey by bus, and then the website just said ‘sorry, something went wrong’ and gave us a number to call. So we then tried to find the exact same flights again and they are now over 2000 pounds. Each! Out of the price range, unfortunately.

I know there are many worse things in the world and I realllly don’t wanna be all ‘first-world problemy’, oh woe is me for I can’t fly to New York…such a tough life! I realise this does not compare to the suffering of many others right now.

But I can’t help but feeling rather sad and horrible. My Mum is literally up in the air right now. She is in transit and has no idea of what’s going on. She will arrive and expect to meet us, but of course, we won’t be there! Now I know Mum will handle this perfectly fine (she is one super cool dude, as I outlined in my last post) but you know when you have your heart set on something and then when it doesn’t happen the disappointment is heart breaking? That is the situation the Dowdeswell girls are in right now.  I’m so so so grateful that Kathy will be there and that they have each other. I’m so grateful that Jenny and I were coming together so we are in this situation together. I’m loving all the lovely messages and phone calls from people all over the world who want to let us know that they are thinking of us and they want it to work out. There are a lot of people out there praying, crossing every single one of their limbs, giving us advice and sending good vibes. There are people helping us search for reasonably priced flights. There are many good people who are remaining positive and truly want this to happen.

And I will try to do the same. As I’ve told my sisters, the 25^th of December is just a date. Christmas is about the people. So even if we have to have ours a little later this year, as long as we are all together, that is all that matters. And we will be together at some stage. I know this.

In the meantime, if anyone has any solutions, please let me know! Maybe someone could give me tens of thousands of pounds so I could book flights at their ridiculously inflated price and not have to worry about it. Or pull some strings at Heathrow/Virgin so that my flight can get un-cancelled. Or even adopt me over the weekend so that I can still have a Christmas of some sorts. Now I know I won’t be alone at Christmas…..but can I please be in New York with my family???