the one about planes, sidecard racing and jetlag

You never know who you're going to end up sitting beside on the plane. Prior to my flight back to the UK, I had been blessed by always sitting beside people who had no interest whatsoever in talking to me. I've heard horror stories from my friend Sue who, every time she flies back to SA, seems to get stuck next to someone who wants to talk to her for the whole 10 hours or whatever it is. And they keep talking when she puts on her headphones and tries to watch a film.

Well on my flight back I got stuck next to chatty people but chatty in the good way. Accompanying me the whole way was Stan Dibben who seemed like a friendly old man and turned out to be bloody fascinating. Full of interesting anecdotes on electronics in the war, gramophones, and other miscellaneous things, it finally came out that Stan was the 1953 sidecar racing champion and he is about to publish an autobiography. I got to see the draft and was blown away by pics of him hanging out the side of a motorbike sidecar going at something like 100mph. Oh my God. You just never know who you'll end up beside. As a result, I had a horribly long flight with delays, no vegetarian meal, reroutes and holding patterns BUT I got to chat with Stan and a lovely Swiss girl who was sitting on the other side and when I got sick of chatting, I could just put on my headphones and they were nice enough to leave me alone. It was fab.

I arrived back in the UK to a beautifully sunny day (apparently the first they'd had in 2 weeks) and I was so thankful because if the weather had been doing its usual grey thing, I think I may have gone home and hopped in to the bath with a toaster. I got to go to a bbq and headed home at 8:30pm when jetlag hit like a very heavy duvet. I slept a lot of Sunday and woke up at 4am on Monday. Cool. (Not.) but I think things are pretty well in sync now so fingers crossed.