Sorry I didn't come on here yesterday folks and didn't comment on any of your blogs and pictures but I was quietly trying to gather my threads of sanity really............

My daughter's friend Sharon, who is coming with me to Turkey, [but she's only staying a week, while I'm there for 3 weeks], came over to [a] cut my hair and [b] finalise my details for the travel and help me sort everything out..........

Well if she hadn't been here, I'd have just crawled into a feotal position and cried my eyes out at not understanding what was going on. You see - since my brain haemorrhage information doesn't always seem to be able to stay in my brain for a while. I can read and re-read something and it just doesn't make sense to me. I need someone here to do it with me and then it'll make sense and I won't forget what to do. It's like trying to copy and paste - I tried it for months, just couldn't get my head around it and no matter what was said, I couldn't fathom how to do it. Then Mandi was very patient and did it with me several times and then suddenly I understood and now wonder why I couldn't do it before. Apparently my brain has re-wired itself in certain places and so that's why some things are difficult and other things aren't. .....

Anyway to go back to why I was in that state - I'd already paid for the plane trip and that was that - I just needed to get my visa for Turkey done, request for assistance at the airport [I can't walk the airport length to get on to and off the plane], so need a wheelchair and I needed to up my baggage weight allowance [Mandi needs some things out there and I wouldn't have enough space on my ordinary luggage allowance] and normally Mandi did this for me, I just supplied the card!! Well Sharon helped me try and sort these situations out and the damn site wouldn't accept my booking reference and then it wouldn't recognise my e-mail address. I was tearing my hair out, and in the end she rang the company up and explained our problems and the first person we spoke to was quite unhelpful and said that she couldn't give me the extra 5KG I wanted added to my allowance, she could only give me an extra 20KG and it would cost me £65 or $100. Yikes - I didn't need that amount of stuff and certainly couldn't afford that. So while we were trying to sort that out on the computer, she rang again and spoke to someone else who was so helpful and said that they could offer me either 3KG, 6KG, 12KG or 18KG extra weight. I've opted for the 6KG and it only costs me £18 or $26. That's better...............

However they couldn't sort out the special assistance situation and gave me a different phone number to ring about that. We rang them and a lovely lad called Carlos sorted us out in no time. I explained that we'd tried several times to get on the site to check-in online but it wouldn't accept my figures and I was getting very upset. He immediately said - don't worry, I'll check you in from here and then all you'll have to do is to print out your boarding tickets from home. He did this straight away and what should have been about a half hour's work, it had taken us over 2 hours, and at last I was checked in!!!!

She then cut my hair and after feeling yucky with my longish hair for the last couple of months, I now feel so much lighter and she's done a good job. Poor girl was here until 7pm and wouldn't let me get her anything to eat before she drove home and to be perfectly honest I didn't feel like cooking or anything after that debacle. So I just did some egg and chips and that was enough....

So today I'm trying to catch up on affairs etc. I admit it's better nowadays to do all your travel arrangements etc from your home and on-line, but when you have a problem with your brain like me, you do need someone to help you out at times. There are no travel agents in town now, they've all gone back into their administration departments. Now I can sit back and relax - I've got enough baggage allowance to take Mandi's laptop and other stuff, I'm all legal and I've got my tickets all printed. Phew............