My alarm goes off at five past four. Damn, it's early. I lay in bed girding my loins readying myself for a long day travelling back home. I do get up, peek round the curtains to see that the cold outside has now developed into freezing mist. It looks mighty cold.
After showering, getting dressed and packing, I find the night porter, check out and walk out to the car. There is now ind, but the intensity of the cold is like a weight: I load the car, start the engine and begin to clear the ice from the windows. I have managed to break my sat nav, and also the battery is flat, and with only the barest of ideas of the way to the airport, I set off through the town and on the main road south. The temperature indicator says minus three, it feels much colder. Indeed as I pass through a town on the way, a sign outside a shop claims it to be minus ten. It feels at least that cold.
The mist comes and goes, it gets colder and colder, the car says minus 5, minus seven. I am taking the right roads, and I recognise the road as being right. As I get near the airport, the car decides it is minus ten after all. I have made it safely, by taking my time, and I arrive with an hour and 40 minutes before flight time. I park the car, dump the keys in the letterbox of the car hire office, get my boarding pass, check in my case, then find all of Denmark is also leaving that morning, with there being a massive queue for security.
But in ten minutes I get through, I can't be bothered to queue for coffee in the bar, so I catch up on more mails while I wait for the flight to be called.
Even with the cold and some snow on the ground, flights are taking off on time, as does ours. Half an hour before departure, we make our way to the gate, and for a change it is full. Anyway, we board the flight and we are on our way taxiing into the warm light of a Danish dawn, cold as almost anything I have ever felt. We take off, and are climbing through the clouds as the sun rises away to the east. I close my eyes, but am on the watch for the delivery of breakfast; it might just be roll and cheese, but comes with a couple of cups of coffee, and after being awake for four hours, it tastes like nectar to me.
Over Denmark, we climb above the clouds, and so Holland and Belgium are hidden from view. I am guessing they are still down there. We come through the clouds over Kent as we pass over Gravesend, wich means we will be approaching LCY from the west, which also means flying over central London. We lass over the southern suburbs, turning north at Crystal Palace and again at Battersea, passing along the south bank, so we are treated with wonderful views over the river to Westminster, Whitehall and onto the City. It is wonderful, and I have my camera, so I snap away.
Over London Bridge, The Shard and onto the East End, getting lower as we seem to skip over the mudflats beside the river, and down we bounce, the pilot putting it into full reverse thriuster as the wheels touch, throwing us all forward, bringing a cry of surprise form a child the other side of the plane from me.
But we are down, I gain the hour I lost on Saturday, so we make our way into the terminal, go through immigration, collect my case and am on the station platform with 55 minutes some 55 minutes before my train home was due to leave. There is time for coffee on the station, before I go to the platform to wait for the train. It is empty, or not full anyway, so I get a seat, collapse into it, close my eyes. An hour to go, I have been up for eight hours already, my mind and body are shattered.
At Dover I get a taxi to St Maggies, then I have an hour before my physio appointment down the hill, as my arm is little better. SO he does some massaging, seems to make it worse, and that is it. I walk back up the hill, where Steffen and Brian are waiting for me, we order another taxi, which whisks us into Dover, dropping is at The Rack of Ale, as it is the day of the beer festival. After a couple of swifters in The Rack, we walk over to Maison Dieu for the festival proper. With my brain, muddled due to lack of sleep, the addition of strong winter ale was never going to end quickly. Jools came to pick me up at half five, I go home, and go straight to bed.
I am done.
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