Thursday 28th January 2016

Wednesday

The alarm goes off at quarter past five; its blowing a hooly outside, and the lest thing I want to do is go to bloody Denmark. However, I have little choice as I am not suffering from the plague or my foot fallen off. Jools makes coffee, and the other stuff that we have to do in the mornings, only for me to realise that we have just ten minutes to leave otherwise I might miss the train!

Panic.

It is three minutes past six as we pull out of the drive, I have 25 minutes to get to the station in Folkestone, just hope there is no trouble on the roads. Rain is hammering down, and I know Jools was going as fast as she could, but it felt so slow. Lorries were parked up heading down into the port on the A20, but apart from a couple of them struggling to get up Shakespeare Cliff it is quite quiet for us.

I have 5 minutes to get out of the car, get my ticket and walk up the ramp to the platform. The train is waiting, so I select my seat, sitting on the other side of the train for a change, but hey, we can all do with a change, right?

The train pulls out, and it is still dark as we rattle through Folkestone and into the countryside. The train is full once we get out of Ashford, pretty much standing room only, meaning those at Ebbsfleet really have to squeeze on. It really is pretty grim, even if it is for only 20 minutes, but it is just not pleasant, and the thought of doing this trip every day just chills my blood.

I am at least traveling from London City today, which means it the usual journey, passing the familiar landmarks, including the old Olympic Park, now nearly four years since the games were on. Time really does fly. The athletes village is now flats and condos, and the games are now a very distant memory.

There is a bit of a queue at the airport, but with my boarding pass I can go straight to the desk, check my case in and go through security. The flight is delayed, and I have two hours to kill. My stomach says “feed me”, so I take it to the grill for breakfast. I have the Full English, but with scrambled eggs, which cause me no issues.

I still have an hour: I people watch, look round the duty free shop, look round WH Smiths and more people watching.

On the flight I skip another breakfast; it would have been greedy. And once we take off, we slip into the low cloud as we pass over the O2, and I see no ground until we are 100m over Denmark bouncing around just before we touch down. I have snoozed, drank orange juice and read an entire edition of Rail.

In the car hire place she said that she had to upgrade me to an Audi A6. She may have said some other stuff, but I wasn’t listening. I had no idea what an A6 looked like, but it was bigger than an A4, and them were huge.

I walk to the car, pressing the open button on the key. The A6 flashed its lights at me and opened its boot. Cheeky thing, and we only just met! It is huge, nearly an estate, and there are more buttons than inside the Space Shuttle. I argue with the sat nav that it should direct me to Ringkobing, it said OK, but clearly changed its mind en route and was taking me somewhere else, but I knew the way anyway, pretty much.

It was cold, grey, drizzling, windy and misty in Denmark. And being pretty flat, there was nothing to take a photo of, and going to the coast seemed pointless. So I drove north to the hotel. It is near here were the nacelles and towers are made, but for today, I have nothing to do other than to prepare for the meeting tomorrow and have dinner.

The A6 goes a bit. Oh yes it does. I find us going 120kph on country roads, a tad too quick, but safe enough. I get the measure of it, and the radio, and find a classic 80s station to replace what sounded like either someone having a baby or having sex that was playing when I got in.

I arrive at half two, relaxed and ready for some more relaxing, radio listening and flicking through the 100 TV channels. Which is what I do.