Tuesday 15th December 2015

Monday

Week 51 of the year

33rd trip of the year

Ian still does not have a silver loyalty card with BA so cannot get into the lounge, but can jump queues at check in desks.

If I had my way, or my wish, I would have slept in until about nine, snoring half the morning away, but as Jools had to get up for six to go to work, it woke me up too, and anyway, I would have been awake at that time anyway. There are cats everywhere, demanding food, Jools goes down to feed them, make coffee. I make it downstairs at six fifteen after listening to the news headlines on the radio.

Jools leaves just before seven, I wish I could have a late start, but meetings for the first two hours of the day from eight, then mails. So at eleven, I take a break, have a shower and go to pack. I am trying new deodorants to find which have an effect on me, so after the shower I try a Sure solid stick one, which within 15 minutes brings me out on flu like symptoms, but different from normal, and it is only when I have a shower the next day that the sore throat and wheezing abates. So, that's another one off the list.

I have the taxi collect me at one fifteen to run me to Dover Priory for the quarter to two train, arriving in Statford just before three, time enough to go into the Tap East for a beer and an early dinner, as by the time I will get to the hotel in Lubeck after ten, the kitchen will be closed. Cheeseburger and fries and a chocolate-vanilla stout: perfect.

onto the DLR to mix it with the early rush hour crush, arriving at the airport exactly two hours before my flight so my case could be checked in. The airport is filled with the heady mix of the business traveler and the skiers hoping to find some snow, somewhere in Europe. I find a place to sit and write some mails and people watch of course: the chic Italians, those Chinese going to Schipol for a connecting flight back home, alden with carrier bags full of stuff.

It is a slightly shorter flight to Hamburg that to Billund, but being night, once we are airborne we enter low clouds and Blighty is lost to view once more. I have the cold meal, but have to pass on the wine, beer and whisky that is on offer as I have to drive from the airport. We get a glimpse of Bremmen as we come into land, then there are the industrial ares of Hamburg before we touch down and taxi to a far flung pan. I smile as the busniess types all jump up as soon as the plane stops, wanting to be first off, but I realise that we would be getting a bus to the terminal, so last off the plane, last on the bus, but first off as the business types jostle with each other to get off the bus behind me.

Once through immigration, I go to the car hire place, and get the nice young man to come to the garage to change the language on the satnav, so I could find my way quicker. I still shudder thinking of the hour Anni and I spent trying to change the language on the one fitted to a Ford a couple of years ago. That done, I program in the address, and away I go, into the night. The one thing about arriving this late is that the rush hour is over and so there is little traffic about, so I make good time through the suburbs to the start of the motorway, sorry autobahn, and so onto the inky black night to Lubeck. According to the sat nav, the speed limit was 120kmh, but most Germans were hammering along at something over 200, quite terrifying really. I was glad to turn off for the last few kilometres to the hotel, where my colleague Henrik would be waiting in the bar.

We chat for a while, and I have a beeer to be sociable, then it is time to answer yet more mails before bedtime. If only I could get the wifi to work.