ham it

As I didn't need to leave space for a big meal later in the evening I was able to make better use of the breakfast facilities this morning and drank sufficient freshly-squished orange juice to make it slightly difficult to breathe, removed all compatible pastries from the pastry-plate on my first visit now that I knew the plate would not be refreshed and managed to hit the table at the same time as the plate of hash browns (which I hadn't noticed yesterday as they hadn't been there) was refreshed. Surprisingly for such a place as this the baked beans still had that too-long-in-the-Gastronorm sheen common to office-canteens and the bacon wasn't the best I've seen in a posh hotel but was still unfatty enough to be worth a rare speculative toastful. There were rather more refills of tea being offered than of coffee but it was at least properly-made coffee rather than Nespresso pish and I received sufficient to not make it worth attempting to steer people past a proper coffee-vendor later on.

After eating things, packing up, downloading the remaining un-downloaded memory cards, speaking to various peoples and bidding relatives farewell until the next fambly-assembling event we (and all the hired suits, my dad's spare wine and the various baby attachments we shall be leaving with them to ease our luggage requirements on future visits) were trundled over to Ham to my sister and new-husband's flat, where we were to lurk until it was time to take us back to the airport. After popping back to the hotel for another load of stuff my parents arrived, followed shortly afterwards by sister and husband prior to their buggering off to Lincolnshire as a strange precursor to their proper mini-honeymoon in Prague. We went for another little wander along the river, this time to Kingston and back rather than away from it, again marvelling at the apparent pleasantness of the general area and the relatively peaceful co-existence of people pootling gently along on bicycles and people pootling gently along on their feet, aided by sections such as that above where there was one path for people on feet and another for bicycles.

Edgar was mildly stressy in the car to the airport but happy enough when we stopped. There was a mild delay which meant that I needn't have rushed my coffee so much; it was mildly unpleasant to only discover that the delayed gate-announcement had been made when I'd wandered up to the other end of the departures areas with the wingpiglet to quieten him, though the "BOARDING NOW" turned out to be a lie and we had plenty of time to get there in time for this novelty priority boarding thing we automatically get and which seemingly makes the gate staff blind to any baggages we have over the strict limit of one cabin-baggage-item per passenger. Take-off wasn't the happiest occasion but we were out of sight enough of the cabin staff to ignore the advice supplied on the way out that smallchildren should be facing forwards during takeoff and pacify him lactically. After grumbling he was happy enough for the remainder of the rest of the flight for which he wasn't asleep, and was interested enough to look out of the window for a bit unlike on the way down, despite the better view.