Friday 26th October 2018

Pay day.

Time to go home.

It is three weeks since we left for the US, and since then I have spent three nights at home. I was still jet-lagged and tired, and coughing like I had been on cigars all my life.

And that night had not been much better, work at two after four hour's sleep, I pottered around online for a while before going to bed, and it felt that I had just dropped off again when the alarm went off at twenty past five. Twenty past four, UK time.

I feel really very poorly indeed, but the thought of going back home meant that I got out of bed and began to pack.

It wasn't getting light outside, looked and felt like the middle of the night still. But the traffic was building on the ringroad outside, so I paid my bill, loaded the van and was off.

At least traffic was light enough, along the ring road and onto the motorway, and the work to add a new lane on each side had been completed since my last visit, so was able to speed up to 130 kmh and slip past the slower traffic.

I turn off at exit 57, from there it was 20 minutes of single carriageway, then a short blast along another motorway before finally turning towards Billund. I arrived at seven, just as the rain began to fall, so I scrambled to get my case out of the back, then walked briskly to the terminal to check in, drop the case off and go to security. Passengers for a budget carrier were milling around looking for their boarding cards, so I weave between them to jump to the front of otherwise would have been a long queue.

Once through, I go straight for the cafe and have a fruit bowl, sandwich and a large coffee while I check mails, and I am feeling OK again.

I look around and see those heading south for the sun are now of an older generation than a month ago, retirees and elderly people are not drinking half litres of Carlsberg like their younger countrymen do, instead they have a coffee, or eat the packed breakfasts they had brought.

THe flight is called, so I go to wait at the gate, then board with the other passengers, taking a shot as I leave the terminal of our tiny plane.

I settle into 8A, and end up starting to read another cop of Rail as the flight is made ready, and take off. My eyes grew heavy soon after as we turned south so I nodded off thus missing second breakfast and coffee.

I wake up as we near the English coast. The clouds too thick to see anything, and like the outgoing trip, the plane was leaping about as we dropped through the thick clouds, and then the plane was being lashed with heavy rain, and it was like flying through a washing machine.

Less than a minute before landing, the ground comes into view, just as we cross the river and skim over a dock before touching down on the runway.

Once we had arrived at the terminal and the plane negotiated its 180 degree turn, we were allowed to get off the plane, walk through the rain to the terminal and so onto the UK border.

A short wait for our bags, then up to the DLR to wait for a train back to Stratford. I look at my watch and I realise that I wasn't going to make the early train, which means going for a coffee or shopping. Or both.

I walk into Westfield, and see that Foyles was open, so I go in to look for the railroad book I had been chasing in the US< but not available here either. I do buy Jools a book on Edward Hopper and the Bruce Springsteen autobiography for myself, though I have no idea when I will get time to read the thing.

I sit and wait for the train in the concourse, then go down with ten minutes to go before it was due, just to feel the cool breeze, and try to stop my coughing which was now making my chest hurt.

Dearie me.

The train arrives, so I sit down and begin to read the Rail magazine, so engrossed in it I was that I don't look out of the window until I had read it, and we were through Ashford and on our way to Folkestone.

I manage to grab the last taxi on the rank, but leave a family from New Jersey waiting; the driver asks if they want to go to the castle? No, the cliffs. As he had a van, there was room, can we take them and drop them off he asks me? I have no problem meaning he can charge double.

I talk to them the whole trip, advising them where to go, places of interest and that we were in NJ two weeks back.

We drop them off, then continue along Reach Road to St Maggies, me saying to the driver to let me out on Station Road she he didn't need to turn round.

I walk along to the house, and a little black and white cat hears me cough and comes out to say hello. Or ask for food.

Meow.

I was home, and so bushed that I put the computer away, turn off the work phone and go for a lay down once I had fed Scully. She still wants something, maybe me....

I lay on the sofa until Jools comes home at half three, she had come back from work via Tesco, just so we had something to eat were we to decide not to go out in the morning.

We watch Gardeners World on the i player, I then cook steak and ale pie for dinner, during which I drain the box of wine, and outside, it was dark again. But it was the weekend. Another dose of Monty at eight, and bed time, so tired, so aching all over. I take drugs and have more beside the bed, just in case.....