The temptation to fill this post with huge letters spelling out the words fucking easyjet fucking fucking fucking easyfuckingfuckingjet bastards subsided as we flew low over lake Geneva and skirted those  angular, cold and generally hard, Alps. But those foul words had been all we could utter while we sat  and ground our teeth against rum-splashed ice cubes back in the plastic Edinburgh airport bar. It had been a hellish trip, a desperate failure of a trip by all accounts, and just as we had been warming to thoughts of an early return to the city of lights we got zapped by the most predictable of predictable news: our Paris flight had been cancelled. And so had the next fucking three.

No sooner than the time it took for this dark information to appear on the screen before us, Ken and I clutched onto one another and began a crab-like running stumble through the angered masses, and then, with an uncanny sense of togetherness, we forced our way onto the escalator and into the 'food village' where we fell, breathless and still numb with anger onto a pair of welcoming barstools. We decided to take our anger out on the barman, and passed a wicked hour or more bemoaning commercial air travel in the 21st century whilst glugging down enough malt whiskey to make his suggestion of taking a flight somewhere else, like, say, Geneva, and then flying from there back up to Paris seem like a sensible idea.   After another half-hour of whiskey we began inventing our own words: Ken started this off by saying something like, "I am going to invisible-ize myself in a minute," and repeating it to everyone who came near us.

Tough negotiations at the ticket desk were abandoned in favor of simply acting sober enough to be allowed to buy tickets for the next flight to Geneva. Another hour or more in the bar-less departure lounge dried me into mid-afternoon hangover status, which messed my mood further, as did the realization that this return trip via Switzerland was a stupid and expensive idea that ultimately meant we would neither be home until midnight nor be able to afford food for the next few weeks. I looked down at Hutch, curled up and snoring at my feet, and had to fight the urge to ram the toe of my boot into his gaping mouth.

But yes, the descent onto the Geneva runway soothed my mood somewhat, the freezing but fresh Swiss air giving me a buzz as we crossed the tarmac and entered the airport, our onward journey to Paris still a vague, and in fact unconfirmed, mystery ....