En Route!

The adventure has begun!

All fairly uneventful so far with the travel plan working from the off and even arriving in Heathrow much earlier than anticipated – which was a bit of a surprise as the driver, Bruce apparently and supposedly local, needed close direction to get himself out on the main road from my house, not a particularly promising start. This was made no more encouraging by his desire to talk, at some length, about his plans to holiday and to emigrate to Borneo. Interesting up to a point but when one has just woken up the family at 5.30am to say goodbye to them for 6 months, small talk is not really going distract the large number of emotions going through one's head. Dozing, both needed due to only intermittent sleep and as a diversion from conversation was the only answer which also seemed to have the effect of increasing Bruce's average speed as he clearly wished to seek a more promising captive to hear about his vacation history and plans.

I'm not sure that I have ever flown on a Boeing 747 before. Today's aircraft was a British Airways 747-400, a truly MASSIVE aircraft by any standards which was largely full but by good fortune I got an aisle seat with no one in either of the two seats beside me offering plenty of room to spread out. As I type now we are about 2hrs into the flight (6hr 30min total) at about 37000ft above Austria. I'm listening to The Starlight Mints, they did the 'Demons' theme tune if you saw any of that; anyway I'm using noise-canceling ear phones that I bought ages ago and have never used for any length of time – they are quite excellent and completely make you forget you are in an aircraft as the engine noise just gets magicked away.

It felt more than a bit weird this morning saying goodbye to everyone but I definitely feel a lot more composed now; hope it doesn't wear off too quickly.