To be almost late at the first time

The day before yesterday was the first time that I was almost late for the puppet theatre. At the weekend I was almost ill. I felt a bit cold on Saturday - the day we travelled to Lendava in Slovenia to attend the traditional Csardas Ball - an annual meeting of the local Hungarian minority. We played traditional Hungarian town music there, conserved by gypsy musicians. There was another music group playing modern dance music on electronic instruments. So we and they took turns until the "star guests" from Hungary (this year Cini Zalatnay and Gjon Delhusa) arrived. We had lunch there, but I couldn't taste the food, because of my cold, I think. Even during the journey back and forth I had such a running cold that I didn't have enough tissues. At the weekend I drank hot tea and I even today I haven't completely recovered; perhaps this is why my mind slowed down and I took the bus half an hour later than usual. (I don't know why I was so sure that I had to take the bus at 9.30 a.m., not the bus at 9.00 a.m. as planned.) So I had to hurry to tune the instruments and to get changed in order to start the performance on time. Even the puppet actors couldn't practise the songs half an hour before the start as usual.