Travel

I'm back in Blighty!   But only after a somewhat tortuous journey.  It started and ended with the hot weather in both Seattle and London, making the slow crawl through rush hour Seattle traffic particularly arduous.  But then we come to the flight itself - no upgrade, but in theory a window seat in the front row of the premium economy section should be great.  It's a seat I've been in before, and it affords you some extra legroom.  But when I boarded the plane, I got to see the person next to me and I knew things would be difficult.  It was this same short, old, fat guy I had seen earlier blocking the gate.  Someone who appeared to be out of breath from the short walk from the gate to the plane.  Someone who spent the entire flight either wheezing while aggressively working on his laptop, or snoring incredibly loudly while catching some shut-eye.  Someone who invaded my personal space by taking over my side of the middle armrest - inexcusable in premium economy seating (I fought back by arbitrarily forcing him to move by getting out my tray table more times than necessary).  Besides the unfortunate neighbor, it also seemed that British Airways have instituted some austerity measures.  I think I've always got a little travel bag when I've flown this red eye flight before - think socks, eye mask, ear plugs, mini toothpaste/toothbrush etc.  No sign of that this time.  And the flight seemed understaffed - took a lot longer to get our food taken away after we were finally given it.  And they didn't exactly come down the aisles very often to offer us drinks.  All very disappointing.  But when I finally get some decent sleep, it will be good to be back.