Hertfordshire, United Kingdom

Finally I get to add a second location to the blog. It’s a lovely feature that it marks your progress around the world, but since I didn’t write anything before I left, my map looked a bit sad.

The journey home was uneventful. The London flight never seemed to be available for check in so eventually I just checked in at the first class desk, where the extra service stretched to checking I had a jumper in case I got cold in just a t-shirt. By the time I’d done that I was behind the whole contingent for a Jeddah flight. A stronger man would resist, but my kindle had taken me from bleak house to a Star Wars novel and I can’t, so I will add that I was pleased to see so many Jedi, and that they find it perfectly safe to apparently all travel together.

Through security and I found a bar, thinking to get some food. The bloke next to me asked if I could speak English and, despite being Scottish, was pleased to find that I actually was English. Pleased enough to pass me a beer, in any case. A proper wild man, he had a 10 hour layover (“my travel agent hates me”) en route to DR Congo from Kryzygstan, and in the half hour of it I shared he told me about his new born, “the woman” who is its mother and a few other women. Who are not. Scottish but lived in Canada for 15 years, so he was all aboot this and that. I left, returning his “welcome to Africa!” Following signs to my gate led me to a locked door, but I got through via the door near where I came in-observation score 0-joined a queue of 1 and was very pleasantly asked how I was. Fine, and how are you led to a delay, before she stamped me through with a “I am fine, but you are late”, though this was a value of late that meant I joined a queue of 100 waiting for a bus downstairs. Definition score 0.

And that was that. Flight, book, chat, sleepy, train, walk, home.