We have just suffered through two days of rain and wind, but particularly wind, I was hoping that last night’s weather forecast for calm and warmth would be accurate. It wasn’t! Now, during quite a few decades of playing sport, I have played through and enjoyed many games/activities where the climate has thrown some atrocious conditions at me, but without hesitation I can truthfully say that the biggest spoiler of all has been the wind. Both Charlotte and I agreed at lunch on Wednesday that the wind has been awful. Disrupting our gardening activities to the point of distraction.

Yesterday I had hoped to mow the lawns and plant a row of beans and carrots at the allotment, however the rain and wind contrived to make any job difficult and in the end prevented me from getting those beans under the soil. What I did manage to achieve left me cold, soaked and muddied, not forgetting tired and exasperated!!!!!!

However, today we go to Heathrow. All I had to do is water the greenhouse (Peter promised to nurture it for the next few weeks), give the pool an extra hoover to clear the debris, now settled on the bottom from the raging gale of last night and of course vote. In that order of priority.

Well, the gales had subsided, but some how downpours seemed to sweep through the garden at critical moments, soaking and/or chasing me back inside to check our little weather station inside the lounge which smiled sweetly and displayed a little sun on its LCD face.

By 2pm, I and Sue had completed all our lift-off preparations and despite a last minute hitch with the alarm system, which resolved itself only after I had lost all vestigial hearing. It made for a quiet journey to London (at least for me).

We had booked ourselves and the car into the Holiday Inn, and on arrival were pleased to discover that the management had acknowledged our status by upgrading us to an executive room. Very nice, of course we are well used to such finery and it comes quite natural to discerning citizens as ourselves to reside in such fine facilities. After watching the ‘Simpsons’ and then ‘Homes on the Continent’ we went to mix with yokels, sorry, locals! And walked into Sipson, obviously the home of where many of the servants, chambermaids and butlers live that service the Holiday Inn and some of its privileged guests.

We chose to dine at the King William, a hostelry that we had frequented a few times on previous trips, in the days when our true status hadn’t been acknowledged. We had a pleasant meal and a few beverages, before returning to our suite and the appropriate Queen sized bed. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

We woke the following morning @ 8am, after what was a restless night. Foolishly we had set the room temperature to 16 degrees and that was just on the threshold of being comfortable. 12 degrees or less next time.

We caught the Hotel Hoppa bus into Terminal 4 after checking out at 10am. A thirty minute circuitous route saw us alight onto the concourse of the terminal.

Check-in was a bit of a throwback to the good old days. Three dedicated desks for Vietnam Airlines, a queue of just 5 people in front and you hand your passports to the pretty lady sat at the desk, who whizzed your bags away and gave you boarding cards with a minimum of fuss. Not even asked if we had packed our own bags etc. etc. etc. She just casually asked if we had been before. Five minutes later we joined the queue for passport control. Slightly more fuss here, but as there seemed to be so few passengers around we completed the dressage in as short a time as I can remember for quite a few years.

Now airside with quite a bit of time to waste we went through the usual routine: text the kids, read the paper, wander through the shops and of course have a beer