Day 2

A shocking, abominable, disaster of a night’s sleep as the alarm went off at 7:15.

My Garmin watch said I had plenty of REM and am fully recovered.

When I next get the opportunity to hold a hammer I will smash the lying bugger to pieces.

I eventually managed to drag myself out of bed and down for breakfast.

On the grounds that it could be one of the last non-curry meals for a while I dug in.

It was all splendid.

We then took the pod to the airport.

Just 2 short tube journeys later we were at terminal 4 and not too far back in the queue for check in.

I say that but it did take ages due to the fact that the Qatar people were so slow at processing and we had a string of people who clearly didn’t appreciate there were luggage weight restrictions so we had to watch them unpack and pack again all their cases.

Good job we got there early.

Security, on the other hand, was an absolute breeze, probably because they were so slow letting people through at check in.

We got through unscathed and the leader of the tour said he was going to base himself in the ‘spoons so that’s where we went.

People started whatsapping that they were there also.

I don’t know what that poor man thought when he received the pint of milk that Joss ordered for him as he foolishly put his table number on the message we’ll never know.

He didn’t comment, so we will keep quiet.

We did however meet up with Rob and Karen who seemed very nice and I thought this bodes well for the holiday.

We had a couple of drinks and then boarded the plane, which set off about 30 minutes late.

More anxiety for me as we only had 55 minutes to catch the connecting flight before the delay - gulp.

I enjoyed the fact that the safety talk was just a video - they couldn’t be bothered to stand up and show us in person.

I made full use of the alcohol on offer and thoroughly enjoyed the beef meal I had.

I managed to connect to WiFi on board so I had a quick chat with Hattie while the football was on.

Joss wasn’t that talkative.

Then I vpn’d to Indonesia and watched the first half of the spurs game - even Joss joined in with an earbud - how romantic.

The plane made up no time whatsoever and so now we only had 30 minutes to get to the connecting flight.

We got off at the same time as the tour leader and we kept up with him getting to the furthest point in the airport until we heard an announcement that all gates close 20 minutes before take off and we’d already missed that deadline.

Double gulp.

We soldiered on though and turning round the last corner there were hundreds of people waiting to get on.

That was fantastic news - the hot, sweaty messes that Joss and I were wasn’t such good news - especially those that we sitting next to us….

That’s it for day 2 - I finish this still on the plane with 3 hours to go but it’s past midnight so I’m signing off.