Friday 27th February 2015

Thursday.

My alarm goes off at a quarter to six, just 15 minutes before the first flight is due out of the airport. If the alarm hadn't have woken me, then the engines starting would have done. Anyway, I am awake, and going home soon. Or as soon as I have a shower, pack and go down to breakfast and walk the 400m to the terminal.

So, showered, dressed and packed, I walk down to the breakfast area, have a roll with chocolate spread, a cup of strong coffee. Other red-eyed people are about, not making eye contact. It is just a few minutes walk to the terminal, but bloody cold out in the early morning air. At least it is starting to get light already, the year is getting older and time marches on. There is a queue to check in bags, so once through there, into security and then into the departure hall. I won't call it a lounge, cos it is heaving with skiing types off to break their legs.

I have time to catch up on my mails, head upstairs for a poor cup of coffee: silly me, I should have asked for a nice one. I burn my finges carrying the paper cup back downstairs to where I could seat, as passengers from a delayed flight had filled the cafe up, feasting on free breakfast via their vouchers. Which is only right.

My flight is called, so I walk along through immigration to the gate, some more waiting, and time to leave. I am in my usual seat, 8A, so settle down with a view out of the window, waiting for engine start and seeing the flux coming out of the engines. That done, we taxi off, and leap into the clear blue skies, turning south and into the cloud which covered the rest of the flight to London. I accept the free breakfast, and more coffee. That feels better.

We descend from cruising height, below is just cloud. I glimpse something of the Essex coast through a gap in the cloud, but even that is soon lost. Engines scream, flaps are deployed, and we leave the cloud as we are over Burmarsh Prison, over the river and down. It is raining, but we are home. Or in London anyway.

No queue at immigration, so there is a short wait for my case, and up on the DLR station, I get off the escalator just to see a train leaving heading for Stratfod, still, just an 8 minute wait for the next one. Gives me a chance to people watch the city types heading to the City on Bank-bound trains. Once on my train, it is busy enough for there not to be a seat for me, but as I have been sitting for hours, I enjoy standing up for a while.

There is time for a coffee and a hot sausage roll at the cafe in Stratford International station.

I wait in the platform, wondering how on earth in the 21st century, a modern station, international station apparently, can be a concrete box in the ground, so ugly: what were they thinking of? Anyway, the train rolls in, still looking wonderfully modern, it will whisk me to Dover in under an hour. It is grey and drizzling, but I heading through the Essex marshes, under the Thames and into Kent. Alongside the motorway to Ashford, and then to the coast at Folkestone and at the feet of the cliffs to Dover.

I grab a taxi to take me home, through the lorries heading to the port, up Jubilee Way and into the mist that hugged the top of the cliffs. It was cold and damp in St Maggies, but I was home. I open the back door, expecting to be greeted by welcoming cats, but they carry on sleeping upstairs. I make pancakes for dinner, dusting them with sugar and sprinkling lemon juice once cooked, in the traditional British way.

Jools comes home at six, just as I had finished cooking chorizo hash, the house was filled with the small of cooking galic, onions, sausage and smoked paprika. Lovely. As we ate, a young badger feasted on peanuts outside, having arrived before it was totally dark, an unusual event. But then these are the very hungriest of times, as food in the wild is very scarce now.

We ended the evening by listening to the new Public Service Broadcasting album on vinyl, which arrived during the week. It is glorious.