Yesterday morning started with a shock. It’s less than a week now until the Lady Holly and I jet off, first to London to pick up Jon, Dom, and Nikki, and then to Iceland. Unsurprisingly, given the size of Iceland, our main destination in this country is Reykjavik. We’d booked accommodation there for the five of us months ago at a nice apartment close to the middle of the city. The Lady Holly got informed yesterday, by email while on the way to work, that our accommodation had been cancelled.
Admittedly the website we had booked it through had tried to email Holly to inform her that when they went to take payment there wasn’t enough funds, but as we were away with some friends over the weekend this email never found it’s recipient.
Even more admittedly, it was totally our fault.
We had input my credit card details when booking it all those months ago with the plan to change the card details to my travel card once it had the appropriate funds on it, and then completely forgot to do so. They had tried to take the funds, couldn’t, then tried to contact us, couldn’t, and then promptly cancelled the booking. I can’t blame them, but it was shattering.
Holly called me with tears in her voice and managed to choke out what had happened, and that she had already tried to rebook it only to discover that with less than a week to our arrival it was well and truly booked out. Luckily I was still at home, and so, after calling work to let them know I was going to be late, went on a hunt to find us some new accommodation. Here’s the good bit; I got us a new apartment for roughly the same price, and even at a similar distance from the city. I managed to bring some calm to the now no-longer-hyperventilating Lady Holly, and informed the rest of the gang to the change in location. They weren’t bothered, they’re champs, and I got to be a hero…although one that helped cause the issue in the first place, but let’s ignore that fact.
I have a theory that when travelling you should always expect something to go wrong, that way when it does you can greet it calmly with a “Oh, hi, I was expecting you” rather than completely freaking out. I’m hoping this was our something wrong, that way we can have smooth sailing from here out, but I’m not getting my hope to high. I’ll still be on the look out to see if our something wrong decides to bring along any of it’s friends.
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Something that I came across in my internet wanderings this week is this outstanding project that shows how wonderful artists are and how powerful collaboration is.
It’s a movie about the life of Vincent Van Gogh called ‘Loving Vincent’ that was made by over 100 artist hand painting every frame in Van Gogh’s style. The video below explains all.
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Another thing well worth watching is this TED talk by Tim Urban, who gives a funny and entertaining talk about the mind of a procrastinator. Really good stuff in here, especially a theory about what happens to procrastinators when the deadlines are removed that I’m sure we can all relate to.
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In five days we leave and I’ve already checked out from work and am using my powerful ability to do the bare minimum without anyone noticing. Probably time to start thinking about packing.
Talk soon.
Damian
Damian Robb 
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