Leaving the UK - oh and aah

 Hi all, I was worried as no email came from the airline asking me to check in from London, but there was an email asking me to check in at Bangkok. So I figured it was all OK. But maybe why I woke at 4.30am. Sun was rising anyway. Should I have caught the 8am shuttle? What if there was a traffic delay? Anyway, the lovely Jordanian driver was a bit early, and we bemoaned the horrors of city life, especially around Heathrow. He promised to take me dinner next time I was in London because I was so lovely, asking about his life in Jordan and going/not going back. Traffic was smooth. 

At the airport there was an immediate split of the arriving people into two groups according to airline, I took the C/D entry as informed by the board, and was immediately met by a friendly staffer who directed me to Thai check-in. No-one there! Passengers I mean. My case was 1.1kg over , so I removed a few books and got to 22.2kg. Still no other passengers. I love that you can just hand over your passport and the staff find your booking and print your boarding pass. No need to have spent over 30 mins looking for email with tickets attached, although I had printed off the ticket information but it had no barcode.

So here I am, already know which gate even though not on the board yet. Over three hours time. It really is extraordinarily well organised. Sadly I am not so well organised as I can’t download any images from my google account even though I am signed in. Generally I compose these on my computer. I must also recharge this iPad for the flight some time too.

So dot points about my holiday/research trip:

Get data roaming from Telstra - no mucking about with eSIMs, second phone and all this two factor authentication stuff

Small computer worked very well, just no InDesign and so a good excuse to do no volunteering while on my holiday time

Meeting relatives is fun, although I did not even contact Janice this time. Mike, Helen and Ruairidh all went out of their way to help me. Ruairidh is the closest relative at fourth cousin, Helen is a half fourth cousin and Mike a fourth cousin once removed. And all were repeat encounters so the meetings were even more pleasant.

Dramas yes there were a few. Leaving my passport and money and cards in a home in the countryside, when the householders had no working car to get it back to me. That is a multilayered drama. All resolved. Driving the hire car through the CBD of Edinburgh was hairy; 90 year old Mike beside me trying to give me directions as I followed the sat nav, and he says “it used to be ….” Mike is like a more sprightly Uncle Kevin but mentally good, and hearing loss the main issue. Getting the hire car back to the airport within the 24 hours, making it by one minute - worth paying the no excess charge so he literally did not even look at it, as he signed the forms. I definitely drove over a few curbs in those narrow streets. How do the buses do it?

The archives all went smoothly, no internet drop outs or film nights to interrupt me. I did a power of work on the Buchans, I estimate I looked at 2000 certificates. Tracked down a few ‘long lost ones’.this was over 12 days. Best was Inverness for space, calm, quiet, squawking seagulls through the open windows and very welcoming. Hawick was similar but cramped and very noisy by comparison. Edinburgh was efficient but a bit soulless as 38 computers were busy, but at least no Internet drop like last year. My excel spreadsheet of all the carts to find worked brilliantly. Green for transcribed, red for wrong people, and yellow for really not sure. 

Hotels were in the main very good. Of course on the tour they were 4-5 star, the palazzo in Venice was lovely with its own private courtyard, much of which was not inhabited, but a bit derelict. The room overlooking the prison is an experience I probably won’t ever have again. I enjoyed the Conan Hotel, the last one, the best. The Conan Suite was their best room. The whole place was refurbished during Covid. It was built in 1780 in a village where some Bain ancestors lived, I walked into Dingwall once, met up with the local genealogy expert and bought a few books (of course). On the morning I was leaving to catch a train to Edinburgh, and from then a plane to London, I spoke to the waitress who on the fourth morning of serving me breakfast asked if I was here for a ‘training course’. After learning I was doing family history research, she mentioned the cemetery 30 mins walk away where the Pictish stone was found being used as a headstone. I saw that in Dingwall Museum. But I mentioned to the waitress that I thought there was a cemetery around here according to an old map. ‘Yes’ she said, ‘ I think there is behind the primary school’. Well I had walked that area, but not left the main road as I judged that the older places were along the main road. But of course a cemetery is a little way out of the village: there were no graves at the church on Main Street where many of the Bain children were baptized. I had 20 minutes before I had to catch the once an hour bus into Inverness. So Colette, the waitress, agreed to look for it for me and send me any pictures she took. Although she wrote down Alexander Bain and Margaret Chisholm, I seriously doubt there will be any headstones. Alexander was living in the little district of Leanaig in 1841, Margaret already gone. This district became part of Conon Bridge. I am hopeful.

You can never take enough photos. But make sure to plug the phone into the charger every night, Uninterrupted to make sure they all upload.

I must go get a coffee and head towards the B gates - boarding in about 70 minutes. I am looking forward to being home, but could have stayed another month too.