Lost Horizons

Perfidious Albion

Well I made it to Perfidious Albion in one piece, and as a bonus, no screaming babies! Mind you I did have a passenger with a bladder problem sat in the window seat, clambering over my legs every couple of hours.
When we arrived the pilot told us that it was a “tropical six degrees Celsius”. Tropical is not the adjective I would use to describe the grey, miserable climate at Heathrow at 5 o’clock in the morning in fact I would use a term like cheerless or wretched.
After a quick shower I picked up a hire car and came to the UK headquarters of Pipe Flange Welders International. The usual procedure is you hand over your pass from the local office, and receive one for this office that lets you on site. But they have changed the process and now someone must vouch for you, so the question is, who would be on site at that time in the morning, who would remember me. Every name I mentioned didn’t appear to be on site. Finally managed to get someone who assured reception that I actually worked for this company and I was allowed inside the hi tech, glass and steel sepulchre that houses our company. Walking around I noticed a few changes like more pictures on the wall, and new coffee machines – but here something’s haven’t changed, one of the machines was out of order and the coffee still tasted absolutely awful.
My body is now trying to tell me to go and get some rest, but I am trying to resist, because I know that if I lie down now, then I will be wide awake at 3 o’clock in the morning. That wouldn’t be too bad in Hong Kong where there are still places open at that ungodly hour, but here it’s a different game all together. So I have got to hang on until a reasonable time, then I can take my melatonin tablet, and hopefully, by tomorrow I will be right as rain.

posted by Luke @ 10:29 PM