At last I feel as though these unexpected holidays are real....... I just went next door to the Cyprus Airways office to upgrade my economy class ticket to business, using some of my vast quantities of Cyprus Airways frequent flyer points. Our new masters will not let us book business class, then claim only the economy portion of the airfare as expenses, they insist on booking and ticketing economy, then our going directly to the airline to upgrade by whatever means we use! At least here Cyprus Airways is only next door to my own office.

So it is only two days until I go to Le Meridien at Limassol, I need to order my taxi down there. Then back here on Monday, to Paris on Wednesday and back here again on Saturday. The planes on practically every other day are booked solid, I checked all the days.

Alec is not going to be here the next two weeks, he will be working from home, as it is not holiday time for him. He was trying in vain the other day to explain to our taxi driver why there were not Christmas decorations in the streets of Tel Aviv, I don't think she really understood! Anyway, this means I will be at work three days by myself, but I think our clients will be busy with the change to the euro, in any case. I am quite happy about the change to the euro, it means that I won't have to have two sets of money any more.

There is more news on the holiday front, I have committed to going to New Zealand next year for my mother's 80th birthday! I am trying not to think about the horrors of international flights, I truly think that anyone who believes that flying is fun these days never goes anywhere... it's quite a long time since I went on such a long flight as Paris to Wellington, but I expect it just means more hassle at airports, since there are more of them between Paris and Wellington than there are between Paris and Larnaca, for example. And potentially one of them is Heathrow, which has got to be the nastiest place in the entire world. Having to pay through the nose for the privilege of being there is just adding insult to injury, in my view.

Oh well, I must stop this train of thought, otherwise I will never get there...