It was a normal early start as this week it is Birmingham
Airport that has the pleasure of whisking me away to far off cities. The city in question is Luxembourg but a new
one for me, Zurich is my location for the change of plane. I haven’t actually been to Zurich before
although I have visited Switzerland a few times but when I think back that
could be as long as six or seven years ago.
But as this is only a stop-over in an airport I suppose it doesn't really
count. It did mean however that I needed
to vacate my bed and disturb the dog at 3.00 a.m. when I made a hasty exit from the
house as all packing and items I needed for the trip were prepared last night,
or at least I hoped I remembered everything.
The journey to Birmingham at that time of the morning is an easy one
with very few vehicles on the road and I was entering the pre booked car park
at 5.00 a.m. on the dot. I know my
flight is not until 8.00 a.m. but I like to have the luxury of getting there
early and a chance to sit down with a cup of coffee and relax, maybe check a
few emails or just do one of the many other things I like to get done. In this case it is continue with the current
story I am writing. As people who read
the blog will know (and I say know, as the blog has its own advert for my first
book of short stories), I like to dabble
in a bit of fiction, but as my work has taken up pretty much all of my life for
the last seven months I have not done much writing at all. But this weekend I managed to catch up with
my old writing group friends, as one of the group had arranged a dinner on the Saturday night
and listening to their stories made me realise I had missed doing my writing
and so I am taking the chance where I can to get started again, finish the two
longer stories I have been working on for goodness knows how long, and then get back to some short stories
of which I have had a few ideas over the past few months. But back to today and
once I arrived at Birmingham which I think has still got my affections as the
best UK airport I travel out of, I got my normal coffee breakfast, I don’t like
spending money on expensive coffee but as I qualify for a breakfast of up to
£5.00 through expenses, I treat myself with the company money and have a posh
coffee. I know it’s a cheek but I don’t get
many perks, if you discount all the countries and places I get to see.
After savoring my posh coffee, the check in desk had opened and I
made it through security with the usual bag search and today the bit where they
swab your bag for some bad residue or other. But
this it got me thinking, the bag I am using today was actually purchased for £3.00
in a charity shop in Goole, where I live.
I had been uptown and outside were a few bags including this very nice
business bag and I thought, I know three quid is pushing it a bit but hey,
treat yourself and I double and triple checked it for defects and then purchased
it, but I didn't check it for crack cocaine or explosive residue and I wonder
what would have happened if the previous owner had dumped it at the charity
shop after carrying 3 kilos of Skank or Skunk or whatever it’s called through
customs. Now there is a story that may
not have been fiction. On this occasion
I got through with no more than a thank you from the security and I sat down and
got back to my fiction writing trying not to think that somewhere a little old
lady may have purchased the hand bag of a rebellious sort, that had carried non medication drugs in it, only for it to go out of fashion and having been dropped off at
the charity shop, then to be the cause of some embarrassing occurrence as the
old lady traveled through security on a church trip to Lourdes. She would always have that little bit of
shame hanging over her every time she entered the halls of the W I Annual
General Meeting and the whispers of here comes crack-head Edna resonate around
the building.
Back to everyone else’s reality and the journey to Luxembourg
was routine, with the first leg to Zurich being a bit boring, I had no battery left on
any of my devices and so I had no distractions as I sat there. I couldn't sleep as the flight was full and
quite noisy for a business flight. I
noticed a lot of people had newspapers and as I looked around I kept getting
views of different pages. I just seem to
start picking up some of the news items when they kept turning over the
page. I wanted to shout, no hang on I
was reading that but I thought it may not sound right. So I kept looking around to keep myself
entertained for the hour and a half of the flight. The second leg was only an hour so it passed
a bit quicker and I also managed to get some sleep as it was a lot quieter.
However it wasn't that straight forward when I arrived at Luxembourg as I had a
number of conference calls and I wanted to go around the supermarket and managed to do a
call whilst looking around the aisles.
Then it was to the hotel, but I couldn't check in as I couldn't park the
car without having to pay and was on yet another meeting as I sat outside the place I wanted to be in. I waited until my call had finished and then for my French colleague
before going back to the airport to collect my Nottingham colleague who was arriving on a later flight from London.
Finally after another call on the way back from the airport
I got to check in and then when I got to the room I could finally put my stuff
away and start looking at the hundreds of emails I have received since the
middle of last week.
I hope to get my work completed tonight and into bed as quickly as possible as tomorrow will be another day on the road as I have to travel to Gent for a
customer meeting and back again in the one day. A journey of I think about 500 kilometers.
So for now its
Night All
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