Friday 29th January 2016

Thursday

In which you find the young author having to act like the professional his colleagues thinks he is.

Or something.

Despite being in Denmark. In January. With the window open. It has been a warm night in the hotel room, and I have not slept that well. But hey, breakfast ahoy. So I jump up, get dressed and go to meet my colleague Manu for breakfast at half seven. I have fruit, then I find the ready-made pancakes! so I put two on my plate, a healthy portion of crispy bacon, then smothered in maple syrup. Lovely. Manu look quite disgusted as he tucks into pickles, some kind of preserved meat, tomatoes and cucumber. You don't hear me complain do you?

We meet beside our cars; he has car envy once he claps eyes on my A6, he has some Seat thing, not as good or as sexy as my Audi. I try to program the sat nav, its having none of it. So, Manu says he'd done it in his car, so I follow him out of town, round the top of the lagoon and then down the road through the dunes to the factory. Dawn is showing, and in the east there is clear sky even hinting where the sun will rise later.

Hvid Sande, like most of the west of Jutland is popular with Germans I have no idea why, but there you go. Danes do also holiday here, but mostly its Germans. There are holiday homes scattered in the dunes, mixed in with the German WW2 fortifications. There are lots of sports on offer, or there are in the summer; yachting, fishing, kite surfing and all that. So there are shops and tat merchats catering for them all. But not in January. Just the locals and us working.

Like all holiday areas out of season, it is slightly eerie, but at least with the sun now above the horizon it could almost be summer, even if there are no other people about. We arrive at the factory, some half an hour early, but better to be early. Manu decides it is too cold to be standing outside, even if I fancy walking over to the beach to maybe take some shots with my phone. Instead we sit in the Audi and I try to program the sat nav for the airport. As it is stored in its memory, it seems no problem. We shall see later if I can make it to the airport before my flight.

At nine we all have arrived, we gather round a meeting table, which is laden with another breakfast, coffee and cake. Seems like we would not go hungry.

The day passes, they take us out for lunch, at some fish place. We have several kinds of fish on a plate. Most of it is OK. Except the boiled fish. I leave that.

Finally, we are given a tour round their shipyard, and their new ship they are building for the Norwegian government. Brought it home to me how difficult and time-consuming fitting out a modern ship can be. But time is slipping by, and I have less than four hours to get to the airport, check in and relax and stuff. So, Manu and I make our excuses and take our leave.

In the car I punch a few buttons and ask the sat nav if it is taking me to the airport by the shortest route. It says nothing. Even the long route would probably be OK. I start the car and glide out of the car park, spinning the wheels and sending shower of gravel behind me. It was fun.

Back through the dunes along the long straight roads, east to Ringkobing, then back down the other side of the lagoon. I did know the way from here, really. The car is a joy, and I realise I would be handing it back in less than two hours. Very sad.

I roar past an accelerating truck as we exit a roundabout. The engine roars loudly, I pull in and zoom away from the truck. I near the airport, traffic gets thicker, but I have plenty of time. I take a shot of the car as I leave it in the car park, drop off the keys in the hire office, get a boarding card walk to the BA desk to check my small bag in. If I wanted to, I could carry it on the flight, but I don't mind checking it in, really.

I am given the magic ticket: a pass into the business lounge: free food and drink. Yay! Manu who was ten minutes behind me, does not get the golden ticket, so sits down below with these in cattle class. In the lounge several of my colleagues are there, drinking and waiting for their flights home. I know a lot of the others by face at least, the same people are traveling over to DK most weeks.

I get a beer, power up the laptop to arrange travel for next week, have another beer, have some peanuts. Have some more peanuts. An hour has passed, and it is time to board the flight. Northern Europe is under starlit skies, so it is all laid out below us as we travel south, like an illuminated map. I see the coast of Holland, with Amsterdam inland, lights and streets tightly packed. Offshore, windfarms with their lights flashing away, warning ships of their presence.

Over the Essex coast, more windfarms twinkling away, with the north Kent coast away to the south, Thanet all lit up sticking out into the channel and the curve of Pegwell Bay to the south and in the dark I thought I could see the lights of St Margaret's up on the downs. We lump and bump on final approach, over the Dartford Crossing where traffic is gridlocked, as are all the approach roads in south Essex, it looks a nightmare. We bounce down, then have a long wait for a bus to collect us, but drops us off right beside the immigration control, we are through in seconds, I collect my case and walk to the station where I have a 2 minute wait for a train to Stratford.

It is quart past seven by the time I reach Stratford, not really time for a coffee, so I watch people, then go down onto the platform to wait, and to see the Eurostars screaming through at full speed. My train is full, but space in the front carriage. Its too dark to see anything, so I finish the music magazine I had brought, and we glide over the M25, under the river and through Kent.

Jools is waiting at Folkestone Central, driving me on the last leg home. We go via KFC as neither of us has had dinner, some dirty food to round off the day.

Phew, I am home at half nine, seems such a long day, and like me, Jools is shattered. We eat, then get ready for bed. However, tomorrow is Friday, then it am the weekend.