Monday 1st July 2019

I agreed to be in Denmark for ten days before it was agreed what my role was going to be. Worst case is that I have a weekend off here and can travel about, look for orchids.

A win/win.

But, it does mean being away for a weekend, and ten days in the Scandic, living on burgers and beer.

I know, sounds hell.

So, Monday morning meant the early alarm call, up at half four, around the house getting jobs done, making coffee, having breakfast and feeding the cats.

A commute to Esbjerg is a pretty big thing, but it is every day for me, and something I can do without hardly thinking. So, with a last chack of documents, and pack my case in the car and so Jools can drive me down to Martin Mill to wait for the train.

It is July, and school holidays are soon to begin, so it might have been my imagination that the train was less crowded. I look out the wondow at the passing countryside, Kent wearing her finest summer fashions, and in vibrant technicolor too.

Off at Stratford, and onto the DLR getting to the airport with exactly two hours before the flight, meaning my case will be checked in with no worries, though the departures hall is packed with people, and the queue for security starts at the check in line, and then snakes around the hall before carrying on up the stairs, through the automatic gates and again round and round the security hall. But I was in no hurry.

Half an hour later I was through, so I find a place to site, but discover I had forgotten my glasses. So to Boots to buy another pair of reading glasses, that done I could begin to read the magazine I had brought.

The airport, originally for business and quality oiks, is now trying to attract the holiday market, so there are large numbers of children milling about, being noisy. Bah. But there's plenty of us grim-faces so and us on the company credit card looking sour-faced about everything.

But I love to fly, espcially from London City, taking off and as the plan climbs, the city opening out like a map below, before the plane banks north before climbing high over Essex. Which was hidden under clouds.

Drinks and breakfast was served as the clouds passed beneath us as we flew out over Great Yarmouth and the North Sea gas fields.

Needless to say, Denmark was cloudy, and the plane was lashed with heavy rain as we dropped below the clouds. And then thrown about as we hit turbulence. I held on and laughed nervously. I can't help it, I like the ground.

I get my case, am handed my hire car keys, then comes the great car hunt as their space numbering system makes no sense. Space 7 is not in row 1 as the form said. Of course it isn't. But thanks to the constant pressing of the door unlock button on the key, I find the car flashing its lights. My car.

So, a 40 minute drive to the coast, along the motorway to the port and the office, where meetings are about to begin.

Do I have an update? I haven't had a chance to switch on my laptop yet!

Four hours later I leave for the hotel, check in and have the smallest room I have ever had. One would think that staying here for nine days would mean I would get a better room, but apparently not.

Soon, it was time to meet Philip for dinner. We eat in the hotel as another storm sweep over the town, washing the streets clean.

We both have burger and salad and a Coke.

And we talk. Later, I listen to the radio, call Jools, and that is the evening. While the rain tries to batter in the plate glass window of the room.