When people started talking about the volcano erupting it was just in passing until the satellite TV started mentioning the risk to aircraft and the chance of disruption.
I thought that such talk was typical of news writers and me in forecasting the worst outcome to nothing more serious than a short delay.
How wrong I was for the first and only time in my life!
So when everything shut down and there was no information or advice from our airline Jet2 and we were due to fly home the following day it seemed that we would have to make some rapid rearrangements to stay on in our rooms until the British Embassy repatriated us at the taxpayer's expense.
You might recall that companies like Jet2 denied any responsibility and simply abandoned their customers!
Gemma had booked the holiday and the flights independently and our holiday company also denied any responsibility!
The British Embassy in Cairo wouldn't answer their phone!
We were quite simply trapped!
Obviously no one had ever experienced anything like it and people had no idea where to turn or who to turn to!
Gemma eventually got a text message from Jet2 advising her to make arrangements to stay on for two further nights and then two more and finally a further two weeks after those four extra nights!
Well, as the leader of a group requiring three rooms Derek approached the hotel manager only to be told that the hotel would be charging £185 per night per room compared to the £50 that Gemma had paid in England when booking!
I said, "£185? Leave this to ME!" and strode manfully to reception and demanded to see the manager who quietly told me that natural disasters were quite common and gave me the choice of either paying the 'walk-in' price or leaving !
Telling him that I was a British citizen and that he could expect to see a Royal Navy Frigate offshore if he didn't jump to it and reduce his prices had no effect!
Gemma quickly built up a £130 phone bill getting Shirley in England to see what she could sort out on the phone and internet which was very little as the agencies she spoke to insisted that most of the hotels were fully booked and didn't have three rooms spare or she'd turn down a hotel which had the rooms but which she didn't like the look of after reading guests poor reports on Tripadvisor!
Well of course they were full ! With people who couldn't get there, the idiots! And with US and all the other holiday-makers who couldn't get out!
If only Shirley, the world's greatest organiser, could have taken charge and told everyone not to panic and to stay in their hotel rooms for as long as the crisis lasted, the problems wouldn't have escalated to the ridiculous lengths that included people hiring cars in Egypt to drive home across the desert and being attacked by groups of marauding gangsters who were only too happy to relieve them of all their worldly goods!
Where's a competent woman when you need one?
Well mine was working hard to help us and firstly got us to stay in our rooms for two nights for only £120 a night before Derek got us rooms through his diving club for the following two for only £90 a night!
And then when Gemma was told by Jet2 that they wouldn't be able to fly us home for a further two weeks, Shirley, in contact with a London-based company called Dial-a-Flight who in turn were agents for Med-Rooms found a five-star-all-inclusive hotel with rooms available for £3800!
She booked them using Derek's card.
At least WE were sorted, unlike many others who being spent-up and with credit cards 'maxed-out' had no alternative but to be dumped at the airport without any help until ' things' sorted themselves out!
What a fiasco! What a disaster! What utter incompetence by the powers or most likely the one man who had pulled the plug!
We, though, were fine!
And the next small hotel was excellent with a great 'diver-training' deep pool and a good restaurant.
Of course it wasn't alright at all and on the Tuesday Gemma had the bright idea of phoning BBC Radio Newcastle to inform the nation of our predicament and was broadcast live, explaining how we felt abandoned.
She was asked to get a photo taken of us to put on the news and I can assure you that getting a photo of seven people having a wonderful time by a turquoise pool under a hot sun, trying to look 'abandoned in Egypt' was incredibly difficult as each time we were ready Derek only had to call out, "Ready? 3-2-1!" and someone or all of us would start 'corpsing'!
Eventually with our tears of laughter dried we managed one reasonably miserable photo which went nationwide in England!
Radio Newcastle then interviewed the Director of Jet2 who said that air-quality seemed to be improving so much that he was sending an aircraft straight out to collect us but it might have to land somewhere on the European mainland, leaving us with a twenty six hour coach trip back to Newcastle!
As the scheduled flight only took five hours and I had once experienced a diabolical thirty hour coach journey to the North of Spain from London with my own three young children and my wife who ended up sleeping on the hard floor amongst cigarette ends and soiled nappies, I absolutely declined the offer!
As if I really had any say!
Even sitting here writing this brings back memories of disgusting French motorway continental squat toilets with their slightly more than shoulder width walls smeared with excrement because of the lack of toilet paper!
Sorry to spoil your tea!
Oh! And on the way back from Spain under the full glare of the sun and with the coach heaters stuck on on full, a wheel bearing burnt out forcing us to abandon ship and sit by the side of the motorway until a replacement turned up three hours later getting us into Calais at midnight, exhausted and starving with nothing open to feed us except a small catering van parked outside and accessable only once we'd passed through passport control!
I took it upon myself to go to it and returning with a few dog-eared cheese baguettes the French passport officer refused to let me back in because, if I understood his 'English' correctly, " Zhu as olredy pissed zis pont and mist ztay zair!
If you have ever watched 'Ello 'Ello' you'll recognise the accent. If you haven't seen it, watch an episode on YOU TUBE ! Then read my story again!
I replied in perfect French, " Look pal, I've had a very long journey! Our coach broke down! My children are starving and we've missed our ferry and you are not seriously going to stop me walking back through your poxy little gate are you? "
" Messewer! It iz more zan my job iz worse to let you srew! Zhu stay zere or I shoot yu! " And he reached for his revolver in it's holster! Seriously!
I backed off, spotted a side door and walked back in, fed the family and eventually showed my passport to the same cretin who checking it and failing to recognise the man dressed in the very distinctive green and white hooped shirt who he'd wanted to kill an hour before handed it back and said, "Bon Voyage Messewer! Av a nice day!"
We weren't going to have a nice day at all as back in England and having had to walk our sleeping children and luggage not only up four flights of ship's stairs in Calais but then down them again in Dover before settling them in our new coach, we were all then ordered off at customs and only allowed back on once the customs officers HADN'T examined any of us!
Shirley and I swore that we would never ever go abroad again!
And, of course, I nearly forgot to mention that after the origanal thirty hour journey to the Spanish campsite, we arrived, again at midnight with only enough Spanish money to buy one small and as it turned out very salty pizza which we fed the children by hand like a bunch of starving nestlings!
Our water had run out and I looked around the deserted bar area to see if anyone had left any drink that I could give them to ease their parched throats!
Aha! There on the next table was a full glass of abandoned lager! So grabbing it I held it to each child's lips before Shirley and I took a swig ourselves and just as I was replacing it a hand tapped me on the shoulder and a deep German voice from about a foot above my six foot frame asked menacingly, " Zhu like muy beear?" !
Never before or since have I squirmed an apology so pathetically as I did to that Colossus! Just think of Mr. Bean and that would have been me!
Anyway, Gemma phoned Shirley to tell her that when she had held a show of hands to see who wanted to go home or who wanted to stay for another two weeks of five star all-inclusive luxury, I was the only one who voted to stay!
I was in BIG trouble with my wife who mistakenly thought that I wanted longer away from her!
Tch! How could she think such a thing of me?
I hope that my reminder of THAT Spanish coach journey will make her realise that I was only trying to protect my party from experiencing the same kind of horrors that we had endured all those years before and that one day, before I die, she will humbly say," I am truly sorry that I misunderstood your motives that time in Egypt and I beg you to find forgiveness in your heart."
Actually before I die I would like her to apologise for never apologising.....EVER!
But then I suppose I must admit that she has NEVER been wrong...about ANYTHING !
In FORTY years!
So very early the next morning and without having even stepped into the five star hotel we gathered at Sharm airport and ignoring the plight of the large number of abandoned people sleeping on benches and refusing to sign Jet2's insult of a poorly printed disclaimer to any future financial claims, mounted the stairs for a foodless flight bound for Manchester which was only a three hour coach ride from Newcastle! You would have thought that Jet2 could have got some food on board wouldn't you?
I thought that with vast clouds of pumice stone being flung into the atmosphere and blown across Europe our plane would be flying into a dark grey if not black sky. But no! The heavens were perfectly clear and we landed in bright sunshine at an otherwise deserted airport before being transferred by coach to Leeds-Bradford airport where an elderly and neglected coach, again without food or drink, was waiting to take us onward to Newcastle.
I wouldn't have bothered mentioning that but for the fact that on the second coach were a dozen exhausted souls bound for Edinburgh who had panicked and opted for the shorter flight and twenty six hour coach ride before being forced to wait for us for a further six hours! They were not a happy group of people! And made even unhappier when we insisted on being allowed to go into the airport to buy some sandwiches and drinks!
Gemma was then interviewed at home by both local television news channels with her and me filmed in silence trying to look sadly at our holiday snaps!
If you watched that item and could lip-read, you could detect me saying, "I wish I was back there! Oh! And there and there!" And "I wish I'd put my foot down and insisted that we'd all stayed for another two weeks you bitch! "
Oh! And the money, the £3800?
Gone!
Vanished!
Denied!
Jet2, Lloyds Bank Insurance, Dial-a-flight and Med-Rooms all washed their hands of us until, eight months later I decided to have a word with my local Member of Parliament, the brilliant Ronnie Campbell who listened,incredulous, before telling me that he would sort things out!
And that is exactly what the wonderful man did!
Shirley and I, relieved to be together once more decided that we would never ever be parted again!
I swore that I would NEVER go abroad again!
Odd that really as she asked me yesterday if I would like to go without her again this year !
And I am going!
YeeHaa!
Surely nothing can go wrong this time?
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