Last night, 10 hours after arriving home to my loved-ones I was on my hands and knees scrubbing Charlie's poo off the bedroom carpet. This morning, I tackled the biggest mountain of washing up I've ever seen! For a split second I pined for room 306, Hotel Guldsmeden, where I’d been trapped for 4 nights. But then I remembered how despairing I'd felt trudging back to it after being turned away from Copenhagen Central Station last Saturday. Hundreds of people and their luggage were all after the same thing – a train out of there. When the guy with the loudspeaker smugly informed us all that we’d be going nowhere for at least 5 days I gained a brief insight into why people who feel they have lost control of their lives commit heinous crimes in a bid to regain it! But I did not commit a heinous crime against the man with the loud speaker. Once I’d phoned Lee and vented my despair, I thought ‘**** you – I’ll just find some other way to get home’. And that’s what I did. I say ‘I’, it’s actually ‘we’ – myself, Lee and 6 others who I got to know and appreciate much more than I would have done had the Eyjafjallajokull volcano not erupted. The trains were booked, the ferries were booked, but wait... after shutting himself away in the kitchen several hundred miles away in Edinburgh (from which my mum reported hearing all kinds of profanities as websites and phone lines crashed) Lee broke through and found 7 seats on EuroStar from Brussels to London St Pancras on Tuesday night. A glimmer of hope! All we had to do now was devour the 600 miles between Copenhagen and Brussels. Undeterred by rumours that car hire companies had suspended one-way car hire, we marched to the nearest outlet to be ripped off. £1,600 for a Renault Espace. Divided between 7 people that was do-able. On Monday morning we set off, we cheered... and yes, as reported by Lee we returned after 10 minutes with a flat tyre. A minor hiccup compared with the hurdles of the last few days. We drove 8 hours to a hotel in Munster, Germany, where we entered a 1970s time warp complete with orange toweling sheets that were outrageous enough to seriously disturb our sleep! And then Munster to Brussels where we basked in the sun for a couple of hours, ate chocolate and then hopped aboard Euro Star - completely oblivious to the fact that our tickets were in fact first class. On the Caledonian sleeper from London Euston to Edinburgh I pondered over how frighteningly fragile our civilisation is and how easy it can all fall apart. Then, I was rocked to sleep by the rhythmic movements of the train and thoughts that I was, finally, just 5 hours away from home.