Friday, April 25, 2003

 

Day1 Auckland to the UK

We arrived into LA early helped by a tail wind and disembarked into the same Spartan transit lounge as our previous trip via a long slow documentation queue. On the first leg we had a grumpy steward on board who seemed a little too old for the job.

All 4 of us had seats together across the central block, which was good. The first leg of the flight had plenty of empty seats, Pat got into conversation across the aisle with a young back-packer from Sheffield, and he had the use of 3 seats. He had Pat take his photo stretched out over the 3 seats and snuggled under his blanket. He tried to sleep without success after taking sleeping pills, so he doubled the doze! That put him out.

I wore a pair of compression stockings during the flight and they worked well. I had been dreading the calf muscle problems of our last trip. I walked periodically and spent time standing at the rear of the plane. Pat also did likewise, to relieve the boredom mostly. She got into conversation with an Irishman also standing down the back; she had come down separately to me. As I stood I could hear him shooting the blarney. He reckoned he was a ships captain… I don’t think he was.

I didn’t sleep much, only dozed. Anthony and Gillian got some shuteye and of course Pat did.

Heathrow and a sunny 10 o’clock morning. First stop, passport control and then on to customs. We never saw customs yet, someone said it was over to the left; the next thing we knew was the sight of Ian’s beaming face.

Ian had a 5 seat Ford Ghia for us. I think he blanched a little when he saw all of our luggage. It was a struggle fitting all the luggage and 5 people in the car. The best we could do after twice rearranging our bags was leaving the boot partially open and tying the lid down.

Out of London, down the M4 all of us chattering and arriving in Cricklade to find Vicky waiting with lunch.

Pat and I went for a sleep at 4 p.m. and slept until 8 p.m. feelin refreshed we got up to find the house empty, everyone was down at the Red Lion 100 yards from V an I’s home. They returned soon and we talked until 10.30 p.m. A long 48 hours over.

posted by OldEric 3:47 am