24 hours later

On Monday, I packed with, well, something approaching military precision. The suitcases were a feat of engineering. My hand luggage contained nothing but more nappies than we could possibly need and changes of clothing for each child; and possibly a book for me, in case of miracles. The kids' backpacks had new presents to thrill and delight on the journey. We had left no plug adaptor unaccounted for, no toothbrush adrift, no sock under the bed.

On Tuesday morning the alarm went off at the ungodly hour of 4.30am. We slipped into clothes, roused sleeping children, put the last bags in the car, and pulled out of my parents' driveway in the cold - but thankfully snow-free - darkness (as my Dad stood at the top in his dressing gown and socks to wave us off). We picked up my mother-in-law as arranged (it was her car, so she was driving us to the airport and taking possession again) and thanks to the wonders of the East-Link bridge and the new Dublin Port Tunnel, arrived at our destination on the other side of the city at 5.30.

We joined the throngs that habitually flock to Dublin Airport between 5 and 6 every morning (or maybe just every morning soon after new year's) and found our queue, which wasn't too long. The security check girl asked for our passports and swiped the chips.
"Hm. You're not in the system. Do you have your confirmation printout?"
I sighed the sigh of the jaded traveller who knows the system will cough us up any second. We had misplaced the printout at some point and hadn't bothered to make it again, as you don't really need it these days. It's not like the dark ages when if you forgot your ticket you couldn't fly. But she seemed to want it, so B took out the laptop, scooped up some free wi-fi, and I found the approprate e-mail.
"There, see?"
"Scroll down...yeah, there you are. That's yesterday's flight."

I blinked. I swore. All the breath left my body. The children danced around me shrieking about the new presents they'd just found in their backpacks. Life goes on, even when you've just made an unbelievably stupid mistake. The people behind us in the queue looked on in sympathy, or possibly just amazement. I didn't really see them. The girl told us to go over to the ground service desk and ask them what we should do.

I have never missed a flight. (Well, there was that time I was stuck in Spain because my passport was in Dublin getting a visa for the US and it turned out Europe wasn't quite as borderless as my travel agent had assured me it was, but that was a long time ago...) I'm the one who books the flights, and writes the dates on the calendar, and puts them in my diary, and makes sure we get up in time, and and and. And I had no excuse. Somehow the 4th had got into my head as the day we were flying back, even though when I looked at my diary - finally, too late - there it was, on the 3rd. I almost wished I was pregnant so I'd have something to blame it on.

Well, God bless the Serviceair groundstaff in Dublin, because they are wonderful. And God bless the family of six who didn't make the flight, and I sincerely hope it wasn't for any terrible reason. The nice ladies told us to go and eat breakfast and come back at 7.15, because they wouldn't know how many standby seats were available until check-in closed. B massaged my forehead, where the stress lines were digging in and setting up for a good long session, and was totally wonderful about not saying a word. He didn't even look as if he was refraining from saying a word. The kids opened their new presents and were delighted, and got chocolate muffin all over themselves, and already needed to dig into the spare clothes in my hand luggage.

When we went back to the desk they told us it was looking good, but they couldn't say for sure yet. They had us "profiled" by security - which is just the bit where they ask you if you packed it all yourself and put a tiny sticker on your passport - and we kept our fingers crossed. The lady behind the check-in desk asked me if we'd consider splitting up if they had fewer than four seats. We were just beginning the Solomon-like process of dividing up the children and the suitcases, and pondering who would go ahead and who would slink back to the other side of the city, tail between their legs, admitting what an idiot I'd been, to await the next day's no-shows, when we were called forward and given the all-clear to put our bags on the scales and leg it through security, down the corridors, past duty-free, come to a screeching halt at immigration (you go through immigration in Dublin - saves time and intimidation at the other end) and finally, thanking our lucky stars and anything else we could think of, onto the plane.

The rest of the trip was a cakewalk. Long, tedious, filled with ever more hyped-up-on-sugar and past-their-bedtime children, but so much more lacking in stress.

In 1985 we were on holidays in Brittany (that's northern France) when one lunchtime I happened to peruse the brochure and find that our ferry was leaving on Friday night, not Saturday night as my Dad was thinking. We left that afternoon and drove up quickly instead of taking a nice slow two days for the trip as had been planned. My parents were delighted with their bookworm daughter who would read the label on a can of peas if there was nothing else around.

So in a way, maybe I've had this coming for 25 years. I promise to check my diary next time.

Giant milkshakes and over-tiredness in Atlanta airport. (Yes, we were flying through Atlanta. Which is probably the only reason we managed to get on standby at all, as the New York flight would have been much more oversubscribed.)