The Outlaws travel to the wild west...

I have never come up with a better (albeit wholly undeserved) expression for my deceased first wife's parents. Following Christine's death and my subsequent re-marriage, they could no longer be the In-laws as this would risk confusion with Helen's mum and dad who now possess that particular title. So by a curious form of logic, upon ceasing to be In-laws, they became the Outlaws. The name quickly stuck.

The Outlaws (aka Harry and Trudi) have always been supremely supportive of me and have never failed to be anything other than utterly delightful to the disparate array of girlfriends that I introduced to them following Christine's death and before I met and married Helen. They were also present and had their photograph taken with the Judge when Helen and I adopted Emily and Charlotte, notwithstanding the fact that technically, they were ceasing to be grandparents. I suspect that some of you reading this will be surprised at the idea that I also adopted my own daughters on that occasion. Yes, it is true. For Helen to adopt them, I also had to adopt them, otherwise she would have become their only parent in the eyes of the law. Even more bizarre, I had to undergo a long interview process with a couple of social workers who needed to be persuaded that I was a fit person to adopt Emily and Charlotte with the consequence that if I was deemed unfit to adopt them, they would continue to be my children ! A more pointless exercise it would be hard to imagine.

The Outlaws have also always regarded Molly as another granddaughter although she is neither a blood relation nor a relation by marriage. She adores them and none of my three daughters has ever seen fit to object to the concept of having 6 grandparents - odd that, especially at times like birthdays and Christmas !

Anyway, we had not been able to see them at Christmas this year, so they decided to come to see us for a couple of days, just before flying off to Spain for 2 weeks on 7 January 2010. So they arrived in Beaconsfield on the evening of 4 January and planned to leave early this morning to drive to Yeovil to stay with their daughter overnight before flying from Bristol at 9am on the morning of 7 January. Obviously, the weather has played havoc with that idea. The arrival of the snow yesterday afternoon caused a revision of the plan so that they would go straight to Bristol and stay there in a hotel overnight before catching the plane. The sheer quantity of snow overnight meant a further revision of that plan. They have now abandoned their car here (it is somewhere under the large pile of snow in the drive) and have caught a train to Bristol. There is only one hotel near Bristol airport - the Holiday Inn. It is fully booked. Harry does not trust any hotel further than 5 miles from the airport to be able to get them to the airport for 7am tomorrow morning so all other hotels have been ruled out.

So they got me to drop them at Beaconsfield station (a short but highly entertaining journey through the snow) with the intention of catching a train to London and then on to Bristol. As I understand the current version of the plan, the Outlaws intend to get to Bristol airport (which has been closed for most of the day) and then camp out there in the (in my view) hopelessly optimistic expectation that Easyjet will fly them to Alicante at 9am tomorrow morning. So I dropped them off at the station and waved goodbye, not sure whether to admire their Dunkirk spirit or to be dismayed by their naive optimism (stupidity ?). I have told them to give me a call if they need me to sort out a hotel room for them in/near Bristol, but I suspect they will not call. I have a strange vision of them sitting among thousands of other delayed would-be passengers singing wartime favourites like "it's a long way to Tipperary" and "we'll meet again" to keep their spirits up, although I am pretty sure they will be stuck in some large draughty check-in area with hard metal seats bickering with each other all night before discovering early tomorrow morning that their prospects of flying to Alicante at 9am are roughly the same as my chances of being picked for the England 2010 World Cup squad.