Day 2 - Turning Left

Sitting at Heathrow watching my beloved quaff his first and second glasses of fizz at 6.00am I had a major moment of the stretching of the umbilical cord. Usually it's me at home and my chicks heading off into the wild blue yonder and today it's us instead. Yes they all got messages reminding them to drive safely, in fact, stay safe generally, and that I love them more than life itself. Bit teary...

Now here's a whole new experience for me (or, it's so long since it happened that I can't remember) getting on a plane and 'turning left'. Our first flight is to Doha with Qatar and it's the shorter one of the two legs. My beloved is directly in front of me in business class enjoying in-flight internet access and I'm right behind enjoying two movies (not easy to find ones I haven't seen and still want to see) but the new Jack Reacher is a winner. Yes, I know that Lee Child readers are aware that Jack Reacher is supposed to be built like a brick sh*****se and have a buzz cut but Tom Cruse has bought the rights to all Jack Reacher novels as films because he loves the character and he makes a jolly good fist of it. Then it was Mrs Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children which is a Tim Burton film and therefore jam-packed with weirdness. Good, if you like that sort of thing.

As we flew in over Doha you can see gas and oil refineries and sand, and not a great deal else but the airport is very swish with more watch and handbag shops than you can shake a fist at. Surprisingly few ladies in full burkha and like most airports you could have been in any country in the world. Either the pound is shot, or this is a very expensive place to shop so we browsed as a way of getting some exercise and my beloved briefly contemplated the purchase of a drone!

As we trundle down to our gate, we are encouraged to take a different gate entrance from the hoi polloi (oh, this is the life) with no queue and once through the bag check our tickets are taken away and new ones issued with no explanation. "We're in row 18" says the one who booked everything but the tickets say row 2 and we have mysteriously been upgraded to First! Now this really is the life!

One of us ate his second dinner at a beautifully laid table in front of him and drank copious amounts of fizz and red wine and then promptly fell asleep upright with his film still running (The Light Between Oceans - probably my favourite film of the year) whilst my bed was made for me and I snuggled up in my Moschino pyjamas.

So as I write, I have no idea what time it is in Sydney but in my world it's 8.00am. I'm washed and dressed in a bathroom only slightly smaller than the one at home and getting very excited. In case you're wondering, he is still in the same position as in the paragraph above, snoring quietly!

Happy landings!

Postscript: My beloved has just woken up. During the night he did a small trip to the bar and fell amongst thieves. He is still under the influence and the kindly air hostess is trying to sober him up! He claims he flew the plane during the night... Oh dear!