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I’ve finally recovered from the flights over and have enough energy to write something more than three lines!

We travelled down to London from Scotch Corner on the “Megabus” last Thursday (7th Dec), which was far more pleasant than I expected, and only cost about 7 quid each.

London itself was not too crash-hot. As we had packed most of our remaining wordly goods into a suitcase and one item of hand luggage each, it was fairly difficult to negotiate the overly crowded city in order to meet Linda’s uncle Ian, who lives in London, for a last coffee and to say farewell. This was exacerbated by the generally obnoxious souls who fill London’s streets, constantly hurrying around as if to tell the world “I’m so important and simply must get to my next appointment immediately,” when, in reality, if they didn’t turn up, noone would notice… until the coffees don’t appear.

I distinctly remember wending our way back towards Liverpool train station. Linda became entangled with a shopfront whilst wheeling her suitcase, several city types worriedly tried to get past us whilst I said, probably slightly too loudly, “don’t rush, let the ignorant twats wait 5 seconds”. I felt immediately angry at everyone. We then asked for directions, from a guy who was marching along beside us in a cheap suit, “is Piccadilly Circus down here?” before we’d even finished asking he said “I don’t know” then some remnant of conscience seemed to rise, and he looked like he was saying that “yes, it is”. But we couldn’t tell, because he’d already powered about 50 metres down the road. He had a northern accent as well. Shame. He’s clearly been in London so long that his head has dissapeared up his arsehole.

Generally speaking, London is full of people who are so self important that they love the smell of their own farts. If you live there, or are planning to move to London, please try to retain some aspect of humanity and try to be cordial. What you are doing isn’t that important, if you really think about it… Come to think of it, it’s no wonder that Australians consider the English to be “whinging poms” given that they have:

• Only ever been to London; or
• Only ever met Londoners; or
• As most flights to Australia are from London, even people from elsewhere in Britain have to go to the place immediately before travelling: giving them good reason to complain.

Anyhow, back to the journey, we stayed in an hotel near Gatwick and flew at 13:30 on the Friday afternoon. The first leg was to Dubai. Economy class. 6 hours. Not overly comfy, given that I’m over 6′5″, but not too bad, and the Emirates in-flight entertainment is really good, as were the meals. I spent most of this leg playing a quiz game against other people on the flight. Mary, if you’re out there, hard luck (I won most rounds, with Mary in second, except for one, which was wone by “Bob”, whose scatter-gun approach finally paid off as we approached the UAE.). Pretty dull stuff to recount, I know, but you must appreciate how mundane long haul flights really are!

After a brief spell at Dubai, we then re-boarded and flew to Singapore, then Melbourne. A slight difference from what was written on the tickets, indeed, Singapore had NEVER been mentioned until we were seated on the plane! I had to ask the Aussie next to me (a really nice guy who was accompanying his family home for christmas) “this plane is going to Melbourne?”. With that brief moment of panic averted, we then flew for 6+ hours (through the “night” - flying towards the sunrise) to Singapore. A very large airport. Extremely long - lengthwise. Re-fuelling over, we got back on for the final leg, arriving eventually at Melbourne at around 2:30am local time.

Dawdled around at the various checks and baggage carousels. Then got a taxi to the hotel, which we’d pre-booked online at home.

The night porter was a good lad at the Melbourne Airport Convention Centre Motel and let us away without paying the $50 deposit (which I didn’t have) as I paid for the room upfront, in cash (I still need a pound). We finally made it into bed at 4am, having had around 30 minutes of fitful sleep on the 25 hour flight, checkout was 10am, and we were up at 8!

The receptionist in the morning was less helpful than the night porter had been. As our room’s phone was not working, we went to checkout and to ask to use a payphone to ring Sharon (my brother’s de-facto spouse (an Aussie term, which I like)) to ask her for a lift to their place (to be precise, her folk’s place), where we are to stay for a while. “we don’t have a payphone” was her response… ok, I said, “is there one nearby?” - whilst looking at the phone on her desk and explaining our reason for needing a call.

To cut a long story short, she sent us about ten minutes down the road, where it transpired there had not been a public phone for over a year, we came back, and got into a room with a phone, made the 30 second call and went back to the airport to await collection. Given that it was approaching 40 degrees centigrade, it’s surprising that my sense of humour was still intact.

Sharon collected us and took us to Alf and Anna’s (her ‘olds’) place, where I am now writing this…

To be continued!!!