No April Fools

What a day it has been news wise. Firstly, during the day I was glued to the rolling news channels as they brought coverage of the G20 protests in London. Two thoughts ran through my head while I watched.

It must have been great being a burglar in London today. All the police seemed to be in the city centre.  And why were they targeting the RBS?  As a tax payer they own that building. Saying that, they probably don’t pay tax as they clearly didn’t have jobs to go to.

Watching the #G20 hashtag on Twitter provided excellent commentary while I watched the TV.

And then on my walk to work at around 2 o’clock, Twitter once again proved to be an invaluable tool for news coverage, breaking the story of a helicopter crashing in the North Sea a while before anyone else had it.

It didn’t take long for this story to over shadow my G20 watching.

It took a few hours for it to be confirmed that there had been at least 8 casualties (still the confirmed number at the time of writing) but by the time 7 o’clock came I was handling on air a massive tragedy to hit the North East.

Fingers crossed tomorrow is a little more peaceful.

I’ve got the flying bug

US Airways Flight 1549 Plane Crash Hudson in New York taken by Janis Krums on an iPhone

Stunning pictures from New York as US Airways Flight 1549 lands in the Hudson river.  It’s shocking that while the world tries to battle terrorism, my main concern when flying  now won’t be the possibility of a bomb on board, but the terrifying fear we cross flight paths with a flock of geese. 

It is a great example though of a plane landing in water and everyone survivng.  Every time I fly I look at that emergency instructions card thinking “when has a plane ever landed on water like that?”, well now my question has been answered. Maybe I’ll read that card more carefully next time I fly.

Speaking of which, the middle of January blues have struck and I’m already thinking about where to go on holiday this year.  I have already pencilled in a trip to Norway in August.   I had one of those spur of the moment purchases before Christmas and bought tickets to see Coldplay in Bergen.  I could have gone to Glasgow to see them, but thought it would be more exciting to go to Norway, not to mention more expensive.

But we can’t wait till the end of August to go somewhere abroad, so it looks like a trip somewhere at Easter possibly.  Faro in Portugal and Croatia are two destinations that are looking promising.  The problem is, I’m quite lazy and would prefer to fly from Aberdeen airport which is 20 minutes from where I stay, rather than driving to Glasgow where the choice of flights are considerably more.  Therefore flying from Aberdeen to somewhere exotic tends to be double the price as it involves a stop in London or Paris (and after travelling through Paris last year I vowed never to do it again).

However if Emma doesn’t get over this plane landing in the water in New York, it looks like a weekend camping in Lossiemouth might be our only option.

David