Arrival

Long haul flights are the pits. There cannot be any worse way to travel. And just to cap it off, some idiot thought that a 6 month-old baby is just what is needed on a 15 hour flight.

What is wrong with these people? The aircraft cabin pressure is about 0.55 bar at cruising altitude. That is a little over half what it is on the ground. During ascent, the volume of air in your body has to roughly half. Not a problem in your lungs - you just breathe it in. Not a problem in your sinuses if you don't have a cold - it adjusts itself. Also not a problem in your middle ear - you can clear your ears by swallowing or chewing gum. This is something that babies can't do, however. When the pressure changes, a trauma is applied to the eardrum and this is very painful if you don't clear it. The opposite happens during descent when the volume has to roughly double.

Result; a baby in extreme pain. And these people think they are caring parents!

That was the end of our peacful flight. So, we got into Heathrow absolutely wrecked. Cleared immigration and customs in double quick time and headed outside for a much-needed ciggie. That was weird. You can only smoke in a little glass hut! I have no idea why this is. It is not fully enclosed so the smoke leaks out anyway. There is no extraction / filtration unit. All it has are a couple of ashtrays and they could go anywhere. Looks like the problem was given to a manager.

Jumped on the excellent Heathrow - Paddington express and got a taxi to our new home:

Google Earth points the way.
While just one street away from Portobello Road, first impressions are a little shabby - we have the basement flat down these stairs:


But inside is a different story:

The kitchen - something we need, apparently.
Bathroom - there's soap in here somewhere and the money's underneath it.
You don't need to know what goes on in here.
The Telly - where the BBC comes from.
And the new laptop finds a home.
Right, now were here, it's time to check the place out.