Oh goodness - I am trying v. hard to stay awake while it is 1505 (body clock time: 0805, but having been awake since 0705 the previous morning a.k.a. 25 hrs awake and counting). Will now try and recount amusing tales that have happened so far, thus avoiding writing e-mails / postcards to everyone. I am a lazy arse, but it is hot and humid here so you can stuff (that's enough -ed) (welcome back by the way -ed).

Notable things that might be of interest to punters can be easily written down in list form. Here are they.

Ed's World of Arse.

Got to Heathrow and bought a new watch in the check in bit of the airport. Bloke who sold me watch said that I could claim duty back on it in the departure laaaange. Got through to HM Customs on the other side of the departure metal detector thingy only to find that evil watch bloke forgot to give me the VAT form that I should have known I needed. P.s. departure metal detector thing is most notably one way. Arse factor: 72%

Got on to plane and took off through clouds while facing the sun out of the window. Lovely rainbow surrounding effect - much enjoyed. Arse factor: -99%

No free food on flight to Paris. Arse factor: 10/10

Having booked an aisle seat (read `arsey seat') at Heathrow for the Paris to Beijing part of the journey on the grounds that we could change to a window seat at Charles de Gaulle, we found out at the transfer desk in Paris that we could not change our seats to window seats as we had not paid enough money to buy this service. Arse factor: v. bad news indeed. Got quite upset about this one.

Jo buys me some crisps and I mutter the "a" word a bit. Jo then manages to get me a window seat, but it separates our seating arrangement. However, having looked forward to having a good stare at things on the flight it was really nice for Jo to sort it out for me. I saw lots of exciting things, such as many metorites, sunset with full spectrum (i.e. red -> yellow -> orange -> green -> blue etc. etc.), crescent moonrise, flying over lighting storms blah blah.Arse factor: cheered me up playing amateur scientist, and I think it was good that we spent some quality time by ourselves mulling over the inflight movie.

Managed to get my wallet half stolen half lost while boarding the flight to Beijing. I didn't notice it was missing, but someone from the cabin crew had found it on the floor of the plane and given it to the in flight matron. She summoned me for a humiliatingly pointless questioning and eventually gave me my wallet back (but not before having made me explain the design of my credit card to her in typically obfusc manner - v. embarrassing descriptions used). Arse factor: funny really, but could have gone pear shaped.

So, all quite eventful for a boring country bumpkin like me. Expect more drivel like this soon.

--Ed

p.s. inflight movie was called "Enemy at the gates" - Hollywood bastardisation of life in Stalingrad during the siege season - which involved many a wry sideways poke at how crap and corrupt and morally indefensible (able? -ed) communism in Russia was.

p.p.s. Air France operates this route in co-operation with Air China. Ha ha.