G & J away from home

Friday, 12 June

We planned to leave for Heathrow after an early lunch, but after re-reading the tickets and dashed out of the door an hour earlier and still felt like we were racing around London.

Traffic moving well

Mostly the traffic was running along nicely but the occasional slow down stressed us up a bit. Never mind, we made it in good time despite also muddling the terminal numbers.  It's been that sort of trip, really!

Once we were safely checked in we could go back and deal with the essential business of having lunch - and it was then we realised how much diesel Gary had got on his trousers.  If we'd seen that before we checked in (when we still had our bags) he could have got changed.  I consoled myself that I wouldn't be sitting next to him as we had selected aisle seats at each end of the set of three seats in the hope that we'll end up with a seat free left between us.

Catching up on lunch

The highlight of our waiting time for me was seeing a guy with a small chilly bin marked:


It looked to me like the bone-marrow was off to Italy.

Naturally when the gate number finally came up it was one of the ones that was a 20 minute walk away and also didn't have any of that 'Go to gate' nonsense, either, just straight from no information to 'Boarding'.  We were walking fairly briskly!

Waiting for the gate to be advised

Once on the plane I couldn't believe how much junk each passenger is given ... Oh no, that bag is too heavy / too big / one too many, etc, but here, have a blanket, pillow, headset, bottled water, and an amenity pack (socks and eye shades and ear plugs, etc).  Honestly, people are just clutter freaks!

The supplied junk (I am not smiling on the inside)

All aboard!  The last passenger came aboard 15 minutes before we were pushed back.  I don't know why we bother to worry about being on time.  But we did manage to leave the gate at 3.15, and then again at 4.55pm after a long taxi to the end of the runway and a long return taxi for a bit more maintenance and a refuel.

Or so Gary tells me.  I slept through all but the announcements (very loud) and the eventual take-off.

Finally we headed for China and on the first leg home.
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