Bad things come in threes

1. PJ's hard drive died on Tuesday evening. No warning; no explanation. Just dead.

2. PJ lost his wallet on Friday evening. It could have been lifted in Victoria Station or, more likely, it was left in the Cornish Pasty shop there. Either way, major pain in the ass. Friday evening in Brighton was spent cancelling cards with various Dutch and UK call centers. We couldn't cancel his Dutch pin pass because they can't do that without the number -- even if it's been stolen. Where was the number stored? On the hard drive that died.

Inevitably, therefore, we were a little nervous about Sunday. And what happened?

3. We missed our flight back from Gatwick to Amsterdam. This is the first time either of us has missed a flight -- and we take plenty every year. So, what went wrong? First off, the 30-minute rail service from Brighton to Gatwick was replaced by a bus service to Haywards Heath -- and the lying British Rail man told me it would take 20 minutes. In fact, it was 40 minutes and then another 20 waiting for the train to depart. Result? Instead of arriving at LGW with an hour and 50 minutes to spare, we got there an hour before departure. And needed to get to North Terminal. And missed the transit by seconds. Resulting in another 10 minute delay. We then ask the BA staff at the self-service terminals if we could check in there, given the credit card used to book the tickets was no longer in our possession. No, we had to join the extremely long queue for muppet check-in. Another 20 minutes passes. We get to the check-in desk, only to be told that because we don't have the card, we need to go to the Ticket Sales desk, where they will "unlock" our booking. This takes a further 10 minutes. By the time we get back to the check-in desk (pushing in, despite our essential Englishness), they tell us it's too late to get our luggage on to the plane, and because we have 2 pieces each, we can't go through security. Result? We're offloaded from the plane. And then PJ got very authoritative and business-like with the BA staff, while I alternately cursed and cried. So they transferred us onto the next flight, just to get rid of us (okay, me), I think.

We finally arrived home at 10.30, exhausted, having missed Bones and feeling exceptionally bitter about the weekend. In retrospect, of course, we had a lovely weekend -- photos and anecdotes to follow shortly.