A Wonderful Thing

Yesterday I had a horrible evening but also a wonderful thing. Let me tell you my tale of woe: 

 Yesterday (and today) I had a training course in the art of phlebotomy so I can be a phabulous and phlamboyant phlebotomist now. This was held at a hotel that's near East Midlands Airport actually in the middle of smegging nowhere, meaning I had to get the airport bus into town so that I could get a bus home again. This is where all the fun started.

My course finished at 5pm and the next bus wasn't until 5.49 which was a teeny bit annoying but not much I could do about it. I set an alarm on my phone for 5.45 and sat in the lobby of the hotel doing sudoku, and enjoying the 90s music that was playing on the TV in the bar area.

Westlife-Flying Without Wings is playing on the tv in this Hotel bar...they all look about 12. Big floppy blonde curtains and spikey hair!
— Jenni Thompson (@CircleThinker) February 23, 2013

 At 5.48 I checked my phone to realise my alarm hadn't gone off. I legged it outside to the bus stop (literally outside the hotel door, up 5 steps) to watch the bus pull away in a cloud of horrible smelling exhaust fumes. Slightly cross, I trudged back into the bar to resume my sudoku for another hour.

Missed my cocking bus, next one is in another hour. ARSE. Stranded at a Holiday Inn near an airport, FUN TIMES.
— Jenni Thompson (@CircleThinker) February 23, 2013 

That was rather annoying, and I was now a little bit cross, but life was still bearable. Then this happened:

Hotel bar has now turned off awesome 90s music and put some kind of sports game on. FML.
— Jenni Thompson (@CircleThinker) February 23, 2013

It was the rugby apparently.

Now I was annoyed. And by this time getting really rather peckish as I hadn't eaten since lunch. Wisely I had decided to spend my last £1 on 20 minutes of internet rather than something I could put in my face and so now my stomach was rumbling. Luckily, I found half of Friday's flapjack in my bag. Result.
So I sat and whiled away my time, constantly checking my phone, and at 6.45 I went to stand outside for the next bus. Which either didn't show up or was so early it hadn't stopped at my bus stop, and just so happened was the LAST BUS that went by that stop. By 7.05 I was cold, exhausted, hungry, really ill (have had a horrible cold since Thursday) and close to tears with the realisation that I might now have to go home via a whole extra city which would add another hour/hour and a half to my journey.
Another bus pulled up on the opposite side of the road, and I ran across so I could ask the driver what my best course of action was. In response to me running across in front of him with all the grace and dignity of a baby hippo, he looked me square in the eyes, shook his head, shut his doors and pulled away. I did what any sensible person in this situation would do; promptly burst into tears. After about 5 minutes of this, I realised that it was snowing, and it was so cold that my tears were hurting my cheeks. So I pulled myself together (read: wrapped my scarf around my face so no-one could see me) and scurried back inside the hotel to mop myself up in their loos.
No-longer tear stained and wretched, but still feeling pretty miserable, I plonked myself back in the lobby to wait for the bus that would take me to another city. Then I got out my phone and fired off this text to 5 lovely ladies:
"Darlings, if one of you is free please talk to me because I'm in major need of a cheerup right now"
which was probably the most sensible thing I'd done all evening.
This is where the wonderful thing happened. Over the next couple of hours, every single one of them replied to me with messages of sympathy, encouragement, concern and things to make me laugh. One of them completely filled my Twitter and my Facebook walls with things that made me smile and giggle like a loon when I saw them, whilst simultaneously repeatedly texting me the words 'Boobs' and 'Pants' to make me laugh (Don't ask. I'm not going to tell you even if you do).

No, really

One of them offered me a lift today so I didn't have to deal with the same horrendous bus issues and I was the gratefullest of grateful things. They all helped me feel better in one way or another so by the time I was finally, finally on a bus on my way home, I was feeling much more like myself and a lot less like I was going to just sob at everyone endlessly until someone took pity on me. I think sometimes I forget just how much we can rely on our friends for the little things, as well as the big ones, and I forget just how nice it is to have people who will try to make you smile just because you tell them you're having a sad. So thank you ladies, all of you, you were all wonderful  and exactly what I needed. I will buy you all a drink/tea/cake/awesome cocktail/toffee toffee flapjack pie/your poison of choice next time we hang out together because you're marvellous.

Oh and I did get home in the end. EVENTUALLY. These tweets were sent about 20 minutes apart:

MANGO is like an Oyster card but only for buses in Nottingham k?

And when I did get home I ate Ben and Jerry's because I felt like I'd earned it.

So yeah. Look after your friends, and they'll look after you. I'm looking after you all by sharing this video that was sent as one of my cheerups (it'll make you go gooey, promise):

And for future reference, this is my wish list for cheery things:

Oh and hugs are good too.

Tata!

-Jenni-