Bye bye Bombay

And wait.
And wait.
There was a bit of a monsoony thunderstorm going on: lots of lovely sheet lightning, like the previous night. The captain told us that we wouldn't be able to take off until it calmed down a bit so instead we were going to sit around on the tarmac somewhere (inside a nice metal box in the middle of a big open airfield... hmm. Hope that rubber tyres are insulation!)
ETD was 02.35am, actual time of departure was 04.30am. At this point I had been over 20 hours without sleep and would have perhaps managed to doze and sleep, if they hadn't tried to stick to the Plan and turn the lights on to feed us, show us the safety briefing, give us drinks, hot towels etc. etc. Anyway, sleep eluded me. The seats aren't comfortable at the best of times, but with my height they didn't offer much support (although there was a bulky 7' chap from Chicago in the row behind me who must have been much less comfortable than me).

I came to a calm acceptance pretty early on that I wasn't going to make my 1-hour connection at Heathrow: quite a relief really as otherwise I would have been stressed by every 5-minute delay that came along. At the time they will have been calling my name "Final call for passenger Dyckhoff. Please make your way to gate 8c where you are delaying this plane's departure" we were doing loop-the-loops over East London.

At Heathrow I followed Flight Connections: there's a longish queue for the security scanners (evidently they don't trust the security standards of other countries) and then I had to get my ticket changed. I'm glad I was up the front as I heard later about a passenger on the standby list for my flight, so if I'd been a bit later that could have been me.

Then through the UK immigration desk. There were two channels: UK citizens and everyone else - no queues at either, but as I got to the front and waited a moment for one of the UK desks to be free, I was beckoned over to the Everyone Else desk (slightly queue-jumping someone coming up on the inside lane) and when I commented on this to the officer, he said (very kindly) "no, you're British, you come first, this is your country after all"! He said it like he honestly meant it, but not in an anti-foreigner way. Ah, bless. Welcome home.

Then another long walk to domestic departures, a visit to Costa coffee and a shortish wait for my flight (watching big planes take off). I met Ruth and Andy again (I'd lost them when I went to change my ticket), only to discover that they'd been in the Business lounge - I didn't know that you could get in there with PoshEconomy tickets: must try that Next Time.

Flight home was totally full (mostly with Elderhostel pensioners - all from Southern USA) so I got my eye mask out and pulled the blind down and tried to sleep (without much success). Touched down at 12.30pm BST (at this point I've been mostly awake for 33 hours) and was met by Someone Special, who drove me home via M&S and cooked me lunch (I realised it wasn't too safe to combine electricity, boiling water, gas and sharp knives in my condition!) then left me to try to recharge my batteries before the concert in the evening. I slept within about 10 minutes and woke up just in time to go for the bus. After the concert (singing in the choir of Dido and Aenaus) I kept going through dinner and conversation until making it home at about 11.30pm, then fell asleep in moments despite loud party noises coming from upstairs. Home.