Friday am:

Up at 6.30 am - leave before seven - Birmingham airport 8.30.  Check in 9.15 and then wait for longer than the flight itself. The total party is 21 flying from Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Heathrow.  Six of us here in Birmingham where it is grey and thankfully NOT foggy.  Last minute checks about some obscure sequences and about which card to lead from 10 9 6.  I've had a healthy breakfast of fruit salad and yoghurt, whilst the lads seem to have had a theory that maximum carbs will improve their cardplay.

Friday pm:

Getting twenty people to Utrecht in time for the bridge to start might prove to be a bit of a challenge.   I was cheered to arrive at Birmingham Airport with no fog at 7.30 am this morning, but forgot that this wasnt the the only airport involved.  Schipol in Amsterdam has suffered from low cloud and fog for a couple of days and this means that landings and take offs have to be separated by larger time gaps and inevitably that means delays.  We sat on a plane for 2 hours 45 minutes for a 50 minute flight, firstly for an hour on the ground at Birmingham and then circling Amsterdam for twenty minues while we waited for a slot.  As I sit here in the bridge room at the Dutch Bridge Federation's HQ, preparations are going on and we think all of our teams have landed and are presumably somewhere between here and Schipol.  Some players at least are checked into the hotel which is just at the end of the street.  It's very cold here in Holland with a covering of ice and very light snow so everything looks magical and Christmassy.