The journey home

Now apart from the landings I have mostly positive experiences on Ryanair but I do wish they flew from the South side of London. Stansted is the absolute opposite side of London from where I stay in Surrey and now our flight is at silly oclock in the morning with the winter schedule it means that to get across town I have to get up at half past three in the morning.
I was relaxed about todays journey though. My mother in law had arranged for a friend of hers, who does a bit of taxi driving to earn some extra pennies to chauffeur me up to Victoria to catch my bus to the airport. He had decided that it would take half an hour to comfortably arrive there and arrived pretty much on time this morning. I suppose half an hour would have been long enough had he not missed his turning and then got himself a bit lost. I could feel my stress levels rising as he didnt seem too concerned that I may be late.
We arrived at the time I was due to depart and I caught the bus by the skin of my teeth.
At the airport I was confident that my case was within the allowed 10kg bag allowance. I then went through into the duty free area and did some shopping, including several magazines of the horse and motorcyle type and a paper, Sweets and a bag of strong salt and vinegar crisps (Neil misses those).
As I strolled towards the boarding gate an officious Ryanair employee herded me off to an area to have my bag weighed. "Pop your handbag in your case and we will weigh your bag" she asked.
"Bollocks" thinks I.
11.9kg. Oops.
"You can either get rid of some items or you can pay 35 euros to put the bag in the hold"
Well paying 35 euros wasnt going to happen so I went to some seats behind the weighing area and opened my case. I removed several of the heavy items and stuffed them in my jacket pockets and took the wedge of papers and magazines and put them on the seat.
I went back to the weighing area and bingo - under 10 kg and she didn't mention my hugely bulging pockets.
"Right, now put your bag in the cage to check the size"
I was quite confident about this one, I have done this before with no problems but oh no, the bloody bag wouldn't just slide in. I rammed and rammed it, tried to half sit on it and then gave it an almighty cloud with a fist and then smiled weakly at the girl as it squeezed in.
"Ok" she conceded.
I then had another struggle to get the damn thing out before going back to the seats, picking up my magazines and heading for the gate.

I feel I had a victory of sorts, as I managed to get everything home, even if my pockets were weighed down and uncomfortable. I couldn't get rid of anything as there were some highly important items such as a nifty new laser level for Neil, and a lovely small chicken waterer for the next time we have chicks. All necessities in life you know.

Its fantastic to be home, even if Neil has done more demolition in my absence. More about that another time, apparently there is a glass of vino waiting which is just what I need after today...

And back I go....

It was another beautiful morning this morning in the Limousin - a smattering of frost dusted the fields and glittered under the sun which shone in a clear blue sky.
Shame I had to marvel at it on the way to the bloody airport to bring me back to blighty.

As we made our way out to the runway the pilot cheered us all up by telling us that the weather in London was 'not like it is out here, very poor visibility' and he wasn't lying - we saw the runway a few short seconds before we landed on it with a typical Ryanair hairy landing - all the passengers momentarily looking for something to grab hold of so that they can put their teeth (and any other loose objects) back in and grab a lifejacket for the upcoming emergency exit.

I then had to share a coach from Stansted with, from what I could gather, mostly Polish and German passengers, and I began to feel a bit like a foreigner in my home country. Mind you I felt like pretending to be foreign as their obvious and understandable disgust for the sheer amount of litter and filth that was strewn around the motorways and roads on the way to London became apparent. They only cheered up as we drove past Billingsgate and over Tower Bridge and all the familiar landmarks came into view. It is an amazing city even in this dreadful depressing weather.

The purpose of this trip is to get signed off as a trainer for difibrillation machines. Just another thing so we have a few irons in the fire should the day job not work out!