I’m at my mum’s house in Welwyn, following a mammoth journey home. I flew from Perth to Heathrow with Emirates, with a 2.5-hour change in Dubai. It took about 22 hours.
I left Anne in Perth as I got a shuttle bus to the airport. On the bus I got talking to two other backpackers - these both returning home to the UK after a year away. I had a beer with them at the airport. They were both 22 year old blokes, and I was soon bored by their tales of the girls they’d slept with when they were away, how drunk they’d got and what drugs they’d done. I like airports, and would rather have had some time to look around the one at Perth.
Annoyingly I was cornered by these friendly blokes at Dubai too, but eventually shook them off. What an anti-social man I turned out to be.
On the first leg of the flight I had two seats to myself. I managed to get a bit of shut-eye, but mainly watched films. We were given a dinner and a breakfast. The food was a bit poor. I missed Anne, who gets inordinately excited by airplane food. It was 35 degrees at 5am in Dubai - blimey!
On the second leg of the journey we were given another breakfast (!) and a lunch (at 10am UK time). I had a v. large G&T at about 9.30am. By the end of the journey I was very tired and very grotty.
On the flights I watched three films. First up, Anger Management - a pretty funny comedy, with Jack Nicholson in OTT mode. It had some good cameos, and a particularly poor one (from the ex-mayor of New York). Three stars.
Finding Nemo was also watchable, though not, I think, up to the standards of Toy Story and Monsters Inc. I think this may be because toys and monsters are more entertaining than fish. I’d put it on a level with A Bug’s Life. Fish are as entertaining as insects. Three and a half stars.
Save-The-World-From-Disaster movie The Core was quite entertaining. It was ridiculous but knew it, and had a good cast who pulled it off quite well. Three stars.
The flight was punctual until we got to the UK. We were kept in a holding pattern over Essex for about half an hour before landing. Ian, the friend of mine who’s getting married, and whose wedding I was returning to the UK to attend, works for air traffic control. As I watched the screen showing the path flight I started, in my dazed state, to wonder if Ian was pulling strings and planning to make the plane spell “Welcome Back Stephen” or “Where Do You Think You’ve Been?” It didn’t, we just circled.
By this point I was looking forward to seeing my mum and very grumpy at the delay. When we eventually left the plane I was very angry with the people who were getting in my way and wanted to push some of them over, preferably hurting them in some way. Following very little sleep and little room on the second leg I was not in the mood for slow idiotic people. What a horrible man I turned out to be.
Given that I’d been up for nearly 48 hours, with just snatches of sleep on the plane, I’m a little miffed that after going to bed at 11pm on Tuesday night (I stayed up to try to get into UK time quickly) I was wide awake at 4am on Wednesday. Gah!