A long journey

My mother is in Canada and I'm writing this in the very convenient hotel where we spent the night; I met her at Trudeau Airport, Dorval, just before supper, where she had waited 40 minutes in the immigration queue. It is lovely to see her still cheerful and bright-eyed after a very long day en route. She'd had to get up at 6a.m. British time to get herself ready for her taxi to Cardiff bus station, had then taken a 3-hour bus journey to Heathrow, arriving in good time to catch the flight that left at 15:30, which had lasted another 7 hours. "I had to walk miles at both airports!" she told me, although it seems she had a ride on a cart down the long corridors at Heathrow. The best thing about her journey was the company of the kind Indonesian gentleman who sat beside her on the 'plane, telling her all about his work (he was on his way to a conference about bone-formation) and his family, and who came up to us in the Arrivals Hall at Dorval to shake her hand and say goodbye to her (making sure she had been met).

At the end of her 20-hour day Mum commented that although she loves being here, "this might be the last time I come to Canada" because she finds the thought of the travelling ever more daunting the older she gets, and she'll be 90 next year. Then she modified the statement by saying she might be willing to do it again if someone were to travel with her! Well, I'd certainly be willing to travel with her in one direction (take her home, I mean). Do we have any volunteers out there willing to accompany her in the other direction?