Wednesday 16th September 2025

Tuesday

Like an over-long motion picture, the project has had a number of false endings. Or places where we thought that it was coming to an end. Last week's trip to see the installed turbines and the celebration dinner seemed final enough. But there was one more act, one final, final ending; and that was the final meeting with the customer, to talk about what went right, what went wrong. And then celebrate. And for us all, this meant one final trip to Holland, to IJmuiden.

And for us all, this meant that we were all up before dawn, to travel to our home airports to fly into Amsterdam. And for me this meant getting up at half four to get ready so to be able to catch the quarter to six train to London. As well as being dark outside, rain was hammering down still. So hard had it reined in the night, that it caused a car alarm to go off. Several time. Oh, how we laughed. And then went back to sleep. Woke up again. Went back to sleep. And so on.

After a coffee, I put on my boots, and a raincoat and grabbed my small bag, and off we went.

The roads were covered in downed leaves and branches, but still passable, and any worries I had that trains would be affected were groundless, as the Javelin was already sitting at the platform. I said bye to Jools, got a ticket from a machine, just to be quicker, and took a seat in a carriage near the back of the train. All set now. And we even set off 16 whole seconds early, into the night and the blackness of the Harbour Tunnel. And already on the other side I saw the large amount of trucks already being delayed by the bad weather.

Rain still fell outside, but in the east, I saw the first light of dawn showing on the horizon, but on the land all was still dark. Through Folkestone, Ashford, picking up passengers, and outside the dawn spread, casting a wane light over the Kentish Weald. Over the Medway, into Ebssfleet where more people got on, and it was standing room once more.

Stratford was busy, the DLR train filling up with strapping blokes heading to building sites across the East End. For a change, at the airport I had no bags to check in, as it was just a day trip, and I was able to get my boarding pass for the return flight to. So, once I had them, I walked straight to security and was sitting down ordering breakfast in less than 10 minutes after arriving, I still had 90 minutes before the flight was due. And in a change, I ordered the granola and yoghurt thing as well as a large coffee instead of the full English I really wanted. I thought that there might be some unhealthy food to eat before the day was out.

The flight was called, but this time I did not have to scramble to get overhead locker space, I just had a small day bag. Anyway it was only half full, so I took my eat in 9D, and waited for the engines to fire up.

A 40 minute hop to Amsterdam followed, with as soon as me reached cruising altitude, we began the descent. But due to heavy traffic, we were held in a stack longer than the rest of the flight, over and over we passed over Luchterduinen and IJmuiden. As we finally turned on final approach, the coastline was obscured by a veil of rain falling from a jet black cloud. A sign of things to come. We landed in a heavy rainstorm, and as seems usual, the taxi from the distant runway to the terminal seems longer than the flight, even with the stack!

Once we reached the gate, and waited to get off, once in the terminal from the next gate a swarm of people dressed in red and white emerged off another flight: Manchester United fans, in town for the big game at PSV that night. Even at the early hour, some had been drinking and some half-hearted singing began, but faded out when others failed to join in. There were huge queues at immigration, as everybody has their passports checked, so the time dragged, but then we would all have to go through this.

Once through, I walked to the main concourse to find most of the others having just arrived, so we waited around for one last person to arrive from Manchester, and him being an Everton fan being on a planeful of Utd supports, he was bound to be in a bad mood.

Once we all were there, we went to the hire cars, loaded up and set off for the office. Despite many of us being here many times, with the roadworks on the roads outside the airport, we got lost, as I always seem to to do on every trip, making us circle the entire airport before ending up where we began, but taking the correct turn off a roundabout and onto the motorway. At least rush hour was over, so traffic was as light as it does get there, we made good time and would be early for the meeting.

I won't go into details, but it all went well, and now we really could say, the project was over, and we can look towards to new one coming up. To celebrate some more, we were taken to a converted church in the centre of Haarlem, where a meal was booked. They also brew their own beer, which piqued my interest, and I agreed to go, even though I would not be able to eat as I had an earlier flight back home that the rest. I had two halves of a dark strong beer called 'Doubting Thomas', which was very nice indeed, but made we really hungry, as the customer had failed to lay on lunch for us earlier.

I called for a taxi, and it arrived just as the starters did for the others, and all very nice it looked too. Grrrr.

Outside the taxi was waiting, and had no credit card machine, so I would have to pay cash and claim it back. Double grrr.

As we drove over the maze of roads and canals, dark clouds began to gather, and soon a monsoon was falling, and the driver hammered along flooded roads at 100kmh onto the motorway, where he proceeded to go even faster, zipping along at a mighty rate. Day turned to night again, and visibility was less than 50m in places, so it was some relief when he turned off to the airport, heading down quiet roads, and so slowing down. €47 for that, all my new white hair too!

I walk straight up to security and immigration: I had 40 minutes before boarding, so no time for a meal. Instead I grabbed a roll for a place beside the gate, it was microwaved and tasted of foam. But its food, right? Nearly.

We board the flight, and what with the long day and two beers, I snooze the way over, missing the sight of clouds over the Channel, but I do open my eyes to see us pass by Thanet, recognising the shape of it, and the curve south of Pegwell Bay, but in the dusk I could not make out detail on the cliffs beyond where our house is. Jools would be there, making dinner, feeding the cats.

I make my way to Stratford, arriving 25 minutes before the train to Dover, so I eplore the shopping mall,a nd find a wide selection of places to grab a snack from. I have a calzone pizza, which they blitz in some kind of microwave, which renders the pastry to same texture as whatever it was I had at Amsterdam.

I get on the train, less than half full, for the final push to Dover, through the night. It is getting to the time of the year when travel will be in darkness. Jools is waiting at the station, ready to whisk me home, in time for a cuppa, a check on the footy scores to reveal that those Utd fans would have a long journey back, as they lost 2-1. Would they still be trying to sing? Probably.