Regular readers of my blog will have noticed a certain bored, twiddling of thumbs going on of late. People who have the misfortune to actually speak to me on a daily basis (yes that's you, school mums) will have observed first hand just how listless and moany I become when I've only got one or two things going on in my life.
When I have fifty things that need to be done I seem to be in my element, dashing about here and there, planning, doing, laughing about how mad life is. For a while. Until the novelty of being super-busy wears off and I get a little tired and start wishing for life to quieten down again. Contrary? Moi? How very dare you.
Anyway, the other night I was on my way to Taekwon-Do, all togged up in my gear when suddenly my phone rang. It was the BBC newsdesk asking, ever so nicely, if I could possibly get myself over to Gatwick airport - ASAP - as some of the gas-plant hostages had been released from Algeria and were apparently on-board a secret flight back to the UK.
My heart did a little leap and I got that surge of adrenaline that used to be my drug of choice in the old days when this type of call was the norm. At this point I could have massively flattered myself by thinking they'd called me because of my specialisms in defence and terrorism and they knew what brilliant and incisive questions I'd be able to ask the wretched hostages about their ordeal, putting the whole thing into a global context whilst expanding on the concept of AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). But really I knew that they'd called me because basically there was no-one else and I happen to live about 25 minutes drive from Gatwick. Keep it real.
I hesitated for a nano-second: I was meant to be meeting some girlfriends for a hot-chocolate and a gossip straight after training and it was bloody cold out that night! But Reader, how could I refuse a small taster of my old LBK (life before kids)? So I found myself about 30 minutes later, my 'TV face' on, dressed in 3 layers of thermals, driving to Gatwick all ready for an action-packed night.
Of course it never quite pans out how you think it will. The camera-man and I spent at least 20 minutes driving madly round the Gatwick internal ring-road in a Benny Hill-like sequence trying to evade the cops who'd clocked us acting suspiciously in an effort to locate our satellite truck. They eventually got fed up with tailing us and simply blocked our path with one of their 4x4s, just as I'd spotted the damned satellite truck up ahead.
Needless to say the hostages never arrived, it must have been duff intelligence. We spent most of the night sitting in the Arrivals hall (as if the hostages were going to walk through like tourists and present themselves for interview!) along with Sky, Fox, NBC, ITN etc watching a board that never changed, waiting for the plane that never came.
I managed to persuade the newsdesk to send someone over to replace me at about 5am as I suddenly realised that in my haste to get out of the door I'd completely forgotten to check with Husband what train he had to be on in the morning or whether or not he could do the school run. Oooops. Kids. I have some. Responsibilities. I have lots. Sigh... it can never be truly like the old days....
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