Saturday 6th September 2014

Thursday.

After my late night, awaking at six was never going to be pleasant, even hiding under the duvet did not make the morning go away. I shower, pack go down to reception and check out, load the car and then walk back in the hotel for breakfast and to meet my friend again. We both are suffering from a bad case of 'morning,'

At least the drive to work is not long, and we race each other along the ring road and then out to the office. I switch my computer on to find I have ten minutes before the first meeting of the day, and that I have solid meetings until lunch.

Work passes and soon it is time to drive down the motorway to the airport. I have a Ford C-Max, some kind of MPV big enough for seven people, and I have it to myself. It is wonderful to tear down the road at 130km, when the speed limit allows. It is a glorious day, the sun is shining down from an almost totally clear blue sky, and was warm enough to have the air con rammed up to maximum.

When checking in, I ask if I have a ticket for the business lounge; sadly not, but that was soon to change when I got home. Anyway, I sit amongst the Danes heading out to sunnier climes, all dressed in their leisure gear all ready for the beach and drinking half litres of Danish beer. They were going to have a good time. Once the crowds thin a tad, I walk up to the gastropub and have a small, I repeat a SMALL, glass of beer. I am joined by a colleague/friend and we put the world, or the company to rights. As I look down onto the departure lounge below, I see more people from our company, and the customer on the Thanet project, and it turns out at least eight of us are on the flight to London.

So, once the flight is called, we all go to gate 2, and a third of the flight are either colleagues or friends of mine. We all chat as we wait to board, and most get to sit next to someone we knew.

Western Europe is mostly cloudless, and so I look out of the window as southern Denmark, western Holland and Belgium roll by, and then over the southern North Sea where we also pass over a few windfarms, some still being built. There is no escape from the bloody things.

Anyway, as we approach England, the cloud cover thickens, and so Essex is lost from view, and we only break cloud cover as we swoop over south London as we bank of the Crystal Palace TV transmitter and again over Battersea Power Station. As usual, my camera is in my work bag in the hold, so you will have to take my word how wonderful it is to fly over Buckingham Palace, the Palace of Westminster,, Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, The Barbican and finally the City. We swoop lower over Stratford and finally the Exel Arena and down we go. Back in Blighty.

We are let off, a short wait at immigration, collect my bag, rush up to the DLR station to see a train leaving for Stratford. This means I have seven whole minutes for the next one! I didn't mind, I wouldn't have made the earlier train anyway, so I do a quick bit of people watching whilst I wait.

On the platform at Stratford, a Eurostar thunders through at over 100mph. As we head out of the tunnel at Dagenham, dusk is falling, the sky is dusky pink and it looks like peace has settled on the land. It was almost dark by the time we get into Folkestone, and along the final stretch of line I can see nothing out of the windows so I can't tell when we are in a tunnel or running along the bottom of the cliffs. Jools is waiting, and she tells me that back home we have a new back door and some new windows as the boys had begun the next phase of 'operation big job.'