Revising expectations

Trips to Cordoba tend to be exercises in revising expectations in a downwards direction, at least as far as the logistics are concerned.
Plan A: We will leave at x o’clock, looking neat and presentable, and arrive at x-plus-3 o’clock still looking neat and presentable, and we will achieve the following to-do list while we are there.

Plans B to F: We will leave at x-plus a bit-o’clock after the child has refused to get dressed, the dogs have refused to come in from the plaza, we have lost and found the relevant bits of paper, and remembered that the car only just has enough petrol to limp to the nearest filling station. We will look neat and presentable, until we have been stuck behind fifteen slow moving lorries and been stopped at three police check points and losing the will to keep going, have pulled off for coffee and cookies in Arroyito, and foolishly bought a supply of chocolate to keep the boy happy, or at least quiet, on the next leg of the trip. We will arrive at x-plus-3 o’clock, or x-plus a bit- plus three plus a bit more and the rest….. We will arrive sometime, hopefully on the same day as we set off. Neat and presentable long since disappeared under a layer of chocolate and biscuit finger-prints. We will achieve the list… some of the list… the most essential items from the list… We will achieve whatever we manage to achieve before everything shuts for the day anyway.

Thus we left at nine this morning and arrived home at eleven this evening.

The meeting. Needs some further discussion. First impression; huge disappointment but with potential to become stupendous if we can get it together.

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