I couldn’t believe my eyes. As if my day hadn’t been bad enough already, when the taxi came to a standstill outside what should have been my wonderful home; it was gone!

There was absolutely nothing there. What just short time before had been our extensive and very luxurious bungalow, was now just a bare patch of earth; that for some strange reason had a collection of white painted stakes with tape strung between them driven into the ground in numerous different places.

“Which one’s going to be yours misses?” The taxi driver asked.

“Pardon?” I replied.

“The town houses, Mrs. Me an’ me Mrs fancied going in for one them. But we ain’t really playing in that sort of league; they were just too damned expensive for us. I hear the original owner drove a real hard bargain for the plot; and that’s why the reserve was so exorbitant at the auction. But I’m not surprised really, that was one nice bungalow that used to stand there. And it must have been the only one left in the district that had a garden that large.”

“I’m sorry Mr?” I said in a questioning tone.

“Everybody calls me Bert, Mrs.” The man promptly replied.

“I’m sorry, Bert, but I don’t understand what you are talking about.” I blustered. “That was my home, I live there!”

“Not any more you don’t, Mrs.” He chuckled. “They auctioned all the plots off a couple of weeks ago, the day before they tore the bloody place down. We went to the sale, those plots went like bleeding ‘ot cakes, I can tell you. Building land around ‘ere, is worth its weight in gold, nowadays, you know.”

I found myself staring at the man in horror and disbelief; in fact I was completely speechless!

On the Friday, just two weeks previous, I’d left this house and I’d dropped my husband off at the airport. He was starting new a contract somewhere in Chile, South America, which he thought was going to take about three or four months to complete. Then I’d driven myself straight down to Southampton where I joined a two-week cruise around the fiords of northern Norway. It was to prove a hectic day, the timing was really tight and I only just made it to the ship on time.

I’d had a really wonderful time, although I was quite surprised at the difficulty my husband and I had staying in contact with my each other, after the first day out. Usually when George is working abroad, he likes to contact me every other day or so. By phone if he can and by email if that’s not possible. However we only spoke on the telephone once during my whole cruise. I was aware that we might have some difficulty because George explained that he was going up into the mountains, somewhere and he suspected that he’d had difficulty finding reliable internet connections there. All I’d had was two extremely brief emails from him during the whole time he’d been gone.

How he can work like that, god only knows? But my friend who was with me on the cruise, said that Chile has lots of mountains, so my husband’s employer must have some work-around for the communications problems I suppose. Well the country has been there for hundreds of years and the Internet has only been with us for what, thirty years or so? So that all sounded plausible enough at the time.

Anyway we enjoyed a wonderful cruise, except for the fact I couldn’t contact my husband. Well, I thought he might get possibly get worried, because ... Well, to be honest it was very naughty of me, but I hadn’t actually told George that I was going on the cruise and if he had called our home telephone. You understand, I didn’t want him to worry.

As I said, I enjoyed a really nice holiday; Norway has some really beautiful scenery. It had all been going oh so great. But then everything seemed to go downhill very quickly almost from the moment the ship docked back in Southampton. I’ve always found that disembarking from a cruise liners is a little stressful. You know what I mean, I’m always terrified that I’ll not be able to locate my luggage with a thousand or so people all trying to disembark the ship at the same time.

Then there was a terrible queue for the taxis. I really should have booked one in advance, but in my rush to make it to the ship on time, of course I forgot. And then real disaster struck, when I got to the long-term parking garage; they told me my brand new two-month-old Mercedes had been stolen. Well actually they claimed that the people who took the vehicle had ‘repossessed’ it. But how could anybody have repossessed my lovely new Mercedes? George never ever buys anything on credit!

I went straight to the police station, where I had to wait several hours only to have a rather obnoxious young officer inform me that he had ascertained, that the vehicle in question was in the possession of its rightful owner. And what’s more, the pompous little twerp refused point blank to tell me whom, that suppose owner was. Although looking back now, possibly he did hint that it could be a car-hire or maybe leasing agent.

I was livid, I can assure you. But when the police refuse to help you, what can you do? I determined to create a real scene able after I could ascertain from George who the car had been purchased from. Things had been made even worse for me, because with all those hours I’d wasted at the parking garage and the police station, I had no possibility of caging a lift off anybody. The friend, whom I’d accompanied on the cruise, had left Southampton immediately the ship had docked.

Then I had trouble purchasing my train ticket, apparently there was some problem with my Debit Card, however much to my relief, my Credit Card seemed to work okay.