Hooroo Oz

Just passing over the last point of Australian land as I write these words. Melbourne growing increasing sparse and flat, turning seamlessly into desert - dunes and red ridges. Miles and miles of nothing at all, as they say. Sunset over Darwin, Melville Island with looping inlets and smoke rising from fires and now it is just the dying sun level-pegging into my window if I raise the shade, bouncing off the ocean far below and miles ahead.

Timor Sea to my left, Banda ahead,with Indonesia, Phillipines, islands upon thousand of of islands, and Hong Kong deep into the night.

It's been a comfortable flight and I've learnt a lot in the year or so since I began my globetrotting career. I'm no fashion-plate in my cargo pants and baggy polo, but I'm perfectly at ease going through security or wedging myself into a seat at the back of the airbus. Everything is ready to hand, and I'm a happy little Vegemite, laptop out, little USB light on the keys, tiny mouse plugged in. All I need is another glass of spiced tomato juice and I'd be in heaven, totally instead of literally.

My back is now just a dull ache and not too much of it. 36 kilos total for my checked luggage and maybe ten for carryon, a long way down from my peak load two months ago. I was worried about maybe cramping into an agonised pretzel shape and having to be rolled off the plane in Hong Kong to be pumped full of opiates. But that's not going to happen.

I might not get a real lot of sleep, but that's par for the course.

Lunch - a notional lunch at something like four in the afternoon - was a choice of four meals, and I chose the fish, contriving to get a couple of spots of sauce onto my shirt, spots which will haunt me all the way into London, despite scrubbing with water and later some squirty soap in the tiny washroom.

The cabin is jam packed, and though I rejoiced when I had an empty seat beside me as the cabin attendants bustled around getting the plane ready for flight, at the last possible moment a couple bustled down the aisle, taking the last two seats in the cabin. Oh well.

Five hours to go before Hong Kong. I've got a bit over an hour there, just enough time for a shower, some coffee, a bit of recharge for my laptop and then it's onto a jumbo for the night flight, dawning into Frankfurt, where the British Airways lounge promises few luxuries. Then again, few lounges are anywhere near as luscious as Cathay Pacific's facilities in its Hong Kong base. I'll see how I go, but I may just head into the city to look around for a bit. I've got five hours. Then again, I might glom onto the internet in the lounge if I'm feeling seedy and stressed.

*later*
Sending this from Honkers, where I've just had a welcome tub and am chowing down on a midnight snack before the jumbo to Frankers.

Pete in Heaven

An odd thing. You know, when I'm at home, trying to get to sleep, I let dreamy thoughts roam through my head, fantasies of me on another trip, flying high, off to see far places and people, the world scrolling by under my window. I get relaxed and dreamy and comfortable and zonk straight off. Kerri says that it takes me about two minutes and I begin snoring.

But now. Now, when I'm actually up here on a long night trip, the reality is that I need to think of something else to get to sleep, because an economy seat isn't the softest bed in the world. Even three economy seats in a row isn't much better. Our plane is half full, maybe less, and I have an entire section of three to myself. I just noticed, when I went aft a few minutes ago, some lucky soul with a middle section of four seats. Short of being in the forward cabin, this is as good as it gets.

I have the best of aisle and window here. A view out the window, and unfettered access to the toilets without waiting for my companion(s) to get up. A little while ago, I went to the galley and asked for spiced tomato juice, and a delightful young lady brought it to my seat. With a smile. She didn't even need me to tell her my seat number, she knew who I was.

So here I am, up in one of my favorite places, bloody mary mix ready to hand, soft music in my ears, a laptop in front of me, and a view of Siberia under the midnight twilight under my happy gaze. Colour me content.

Time is doing its usual trick, warping and shifting and refusing to be pinned down. My watch says one thing, my body another, the world outside a third. And it's all changing. It's probably about four in the morning outside, a few days after the summer solstice. Midwinter in Canberra, of course, and at home the frozen grass is crunching under Kerri's shoes as she collects the morning paper in the full but frosty daylight.

But here. Here is dawn's rosy glow just under the horizon, and soon I shall have to draw the shade lest the brightness disturb the darkened cabin. I took a few photographs of the wing silhouetted against the red streak along the horizon, some random part of Siberia below, huge lakes and looping rivers. Probably stuffed with wildlife, if instead of sweet-talking a flight attendant into fetching me a drink I could persuade the captain to take us down and skim across the wetlands, flocks of startled geese rising below us, wolves and yaks and bears looking up in wonder, the occasional Russian village waking to the jet blast of four big turbofans streaking over their rooftiles. "Certainly, Sir," the captain would say, "It'll be fun. Let's do that."

I can see a contrail forming just outside my window, and when the sun hits us in a few minutes, we'll be a rosy comet high in the pale blue heaven. Perhaps Siberian newspaper deliverers will pause on their rounds and look up at the wonder far above.

And me, I'm in the heart of the comet, finishing the last of my juice with a contented slurp. And writing about my dreams.

Well, there's lawlessness for you

Apparently it's illegal in the UK to deface an image of the Queen. Jim Hawkins of BBC Radio Shropshire just borrowed a fiver from a colleague, drew a moustache on it, and gloated, live on air.

Feels really weird to listen to the show in the morning instead of the evening.

Check your bag, sir?

The story of how I arrived in London in midsummer without my luggage is a poignant one, though not without its high points, the highest being that I didn't have to schlepp it onto the train system and then up (or slightly longer down) the hill to my hostel. In fact, I only had my carry on, so after pretending that I was driving the train, I got off the Docklands Light Railway at Bank station and strolled lightly and more or less randomly along London's grid system of streets until I arrived at my hostel.

We had a good flight in. Only a small plane, a four-jetter Avro, and half the passenger load was Australian, judging by the passports I saw. Crossed a Channel crowded with shipping then flew up the Thames and right over the centre of the city before turning onto the glide slope down to London City airport. I can see why people like this airport compared to Heathrow and Gatwick. Compared to them it's like getting off the bus at the side of the road instead of at the bus terminal. But my bags weren't on the bus.

So I arrived, a bit hot and sweaty, at my hostel. Wanting a shower and a change of clothes. Had a shower and put the drip back into drip-dry. But nothing to be done about the clothes. Put my head down for a bit. Drew the curtains, turned off the light, stretched out on my lower bunk, luxuriated in the horizontalness of it all, the softness of the mattriss, the increasing dreamy drowsiness...

And then one of the other hostellers entered the room, snapped on the light, saw me and spent ten minutes trying to be quiet while rummaging around in his things. Silly trying to nap in the middle of the day, but I got an hour, I guess. Then I got up, checked out the swapshelves, and then browsed through a couple of bookshops on Ludgate Hill.

Sat out the front of St Pauls for a bit, enjoying the coldness and cola taste of a Marks and Sparks generic drink, then next door to Starbucks and here I am. I usually get a 10p discount for having my own mug, but that's in my luggage, which is probably passing overhead about now.

Apparently they left it behind in Frankfurt and it's coming on the next jet, which gets in at quarter to seven. They'll courier it out to the hostel and I'll collect it there. In theory. I'll report back later.

Not sure what to do tomorrow. Elhamisabel, what would you do on a loose day in London?