Another spanner in the works

Tuesday March 22nd
We left at 8.30 am as I had an appointment in Balclutha at the opticians’ at 9.40 and Bruce at the dentists’ at 10!
The optician decided the American lens manufacturers had misread the prescription and had only supplied a -13D lens instead of a -13.5D, so he had to take the spectacles back to Dunedin to check them on a better machine and then return them to the US to get a replacement lens. So a much longer wait for a new pair! It's been a long time since I had new glasses as when I visited an optician last year, it was discovered that I had retinal problems that needed investigating. After some treatment sessions that didn't resolve them, it was decided, some 6 months later, that I could now try to get new glasses.
We had a slight detour at Allenton, which made us a little late arriving at the motel where we were going to leave our car until our return. The motel owner, a Surrey man, had tried phoning us, but unfortunately that phone was at home!
Once at the airport about an hour before the flight was due to leave, after completing the automatic check-in procedure we were rather surprised to be told by the lady at the bag drop that the plane might be delayed, and that we should go and have a coffee and to await further announcements. Whilst we were enjoying our coffees, I happened to glance over at the flights’ board and noticed a Cancelled sign by one of the flights. On investigation, I found out that it was ours! We discovered that, due to fog earlier in the day which had prevented a plane from landing, even though the pilot tried three times then had to return to Christchurch, the 'powers-that-be' had decided to cancel the following two planes to prevent another abortive landing attempt. Unfortunately there were no more flights to Christchurch until mid-afternoon, none early enough to enable us to catch our international flight. What to do? Was there enough time to drive to Christchurch? No!
The Air New Zealand and airport staff were most helpful, and offered to fly us to Auckland on a later plane if we could rebook our overseas flights to Uganda with our travel agent. Otherwise we could try to book a later flight out of Christchurch if one was available. Of course there were quite a few others in a similar predicament, although some of them managed to get later flights to their destinations. One lady, a Breton, who’d only started learning French when she started school at age 6, was desperate to get home. She’d been visiting her daughter, who was studying in Dunedin doing post-doctoral research into childhood leukaemia.
We were very glad to discover that we could continue on our travels, albeit arriving a day or two late. One option was to fly to Auckland the same day, then on to Uganda the next evening. A less-attractive one was to fly to Christchurch on Thursday, arriving in Uganda on Friday. That would make us a whole 2 days’ late, and make our onward arrangements in Tanzania not so easy to manage.
We were able to leave that evening after rather a long time at the airport, and stayed with Bruce’s youngest brother, Stuart, and his family in Auckland. We had quite a late tea, and went to bed before some of the family came home from Youth Group.