Back In One Piece!!!!!!!!
Sooooooo after a month away, here I am sitting back in my Maida Vale penthouse gazing out at the rapidly baring trees. They were full of green leaves before I left!
It actually does feel good to be home. I wasn't desperate to get back, and finances and other commitments permitting would've happily stayed in SE Asia for the rest of my life, but now that I am here there's something to be said for the comfort of your own abode.
I got lucky with the flight home, sadly Dr J's letter did bugger all as apparently you're meant to go into great detail and take it to the Head Office of the Airline before you fly. I also got stung for almost £200 worth of excess baggage as I'd crammed my case with just about everything cos I was feeling a tad too fragile to be schlepping stuff in my hand luggage. My tale of woe carried no clout with the stone-faced witch at check in tho.
Where the letter did come in handy was once I'd boarded the plane, some eight hours later, I showed it to the stewardess who was a princess. She got me a whole row of four seats all to myself! The last time that happened was when I flew to Abu Dhabi on New Year's Day a few years back to do gigs. What this meant was that once I'd had a bit of dinner, I was able to take a hardcore painkiller and two Diazepam and knock myself out. I stretched out, covered myself up with blankets and the next thing I knew I was being woken for breakfast with just two hours of the 13 hour flight left to go. Awesome!
After a bit of omelette and a coffee (not a patch on my Shangri-La breakfast feasts!) I felt a bit sleepy again, so nodded off right until the seat belt sign came on. One of the best flights ever!
As I disembarked, I took at look at the 'flat beds' in First Class and they were way more cramped than my huge plane bed, so for once not getting an up-grade was an enormous blessing.
To add to the joy, when I arrived at Passport Control I remembered that I'd registered for the Iris scan thing on the way - seems like soooooo long ago! - and thus I avoided the massive queue to get back into the country. Do yourselves a favour folks, register! A huge thanks to Mark Walker for telling me about it too.
I got home to a mountain of post, 98% of it junk mail, the other 2% bills. The bliss of coming home! Mind you the tax bill was the right side of not being a nightmare so there's some good news there too.
I somehow managed to carry my hugely overweight case upstairs without ripping anymore stitches, and within three hours I'd unpacked, done two loads of washing, showered and caught up on phone calls to friends and family. Suddenly the last month seemed like a distant memory!
A trip to the bank and the nail parlour was followed by a very quick dip into M&S for milk and some dinner, and the bus home. I was knackered again, so I hit the sack at 4pm and woke at 1am! I got up and cleaned my teeth, took another dose of Diazepam and slept again till 6am!
I've been writing cheques, making appointments and catching up on the minutae of my life since then, but now I am gonna get my stuff together so I can catch a train to Birmingham. I'm there the whole weekend at Jongleurs, and there's a cracking bill, not to mention a couple of good mates at the Glee, so it should be quite a sociable weekend.
Whatever your plans people, have fun!
It actually does feel good to be home. I wasn't desperate to get back, and finances and other commitments permitting would've happily stayed in SE Asia for the rest of my life, but now that I am here there's something to be said for the comfort of your own abode.
I got lucky with the flight home, sadly Dr J's letter did bugger all as apparently you're meant to go into great detail and take it to the Head Office of the Airline before you fly. I also got stung for almost £200 worth of excess baggage as I'd crammed my case with just about everything cos I was feeling a tad too fragile to be schlepping stuff in my hand luggage. My tale of woe carried no clout with the stone-faced witch at check in tho.
Where the letter did come in handy was once I'd boarded the plane, some eight hours later, I showed it to the stewardess who was a princess. She got me a whole row of four seats all to myself! The last time that happened was when I flew to Abu Dhabi on New Year's Day a few years back to do gigs. What this meant was that once I'd had a bit of dinner, I was able to take a hardcore painkiller and two Diazepam and knock myself out. I stretched out, covered myself up with blankets and the next thing I knew I was being woken for breakfast with just two hours of the 13 hour flight left to go. Awesome!
After a bit of omelette and a coffee (not a patch on my Shangri-La breakfast feasts!) I felt a bit sleepy again, so nodded off right until the seat belt sign came on. One of the best flights ever!
As I disembarked, I took at look at the 'flat beds' in First Class and they were way more cramped than my huge plane bed, so for once not getting an up-grade was an enormous blessing.
To add to the joy, when I arrived at Passport Control I remembered that I'd registered for the Iris scan thing on the way - seems like soooooo long ago! - and thus I avoided the massive queue to get back into the country. Do yourselves a favour folks, register! A huge thanks to Mark Walker for telling me about it too.
I got home to a mountain of post, 98% of it junk mail, the other 2% bills. The bliss of coming home! Mind you the tax bill was the right side of not being a nightmare so there's some good news there too.
I somehow managed to carry my hugely overweight case upstairs without ripping anymore stitches, and within three hours I'd unpacked, done two loads of washing, showered and caught up on phone calls to friends and family. Suddenly the last month seemed like a distant memory!
A trip to the bank and the nail parlour was followed by a very quick dip into M&S for milk and some dinner, and the bus home. I was knackered again, so I hit the sack at 4pm and woke at 1am! I got up and cleaned my teeth, took another dose of Diazepam and slept again till 6am!
I've been writing cheques, making appointments and catching up on the minutae of my life since then, but now I am gonna get my stuff together so I can catch a train to Birmingham. I'm there the whole weekend at Jongleurs, and there's a cracking bill, not to mention a couple of good mates at the Glee, so it should be quite a sociable weekend.
Whatever your plans people, have fun!
Labels: Travel
posted by JoJo Smith at Thursday, November 06, 2008
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