Home Sweet Home!

I landed in Heathrow at 5am this morning, after which the whole plane clapped in joy. The joy soon left me as I learnt nobody could make it to the airport to collect me, and tears showed up. I sucked it up as I made my way through immigration, and waited for nearly fifteen minutes at the luggage carousel as everyone else's bags went past. My bag finally turned up, and I used my penknife to cut through the ziptie to release my hoody, unfortunately I sliced through the bag's cord and my finger in haste, releasing a gush of blood down my hand. I managed to get some plasters out of my small bag to tape up my injury and loaded both bags on my back.

I walked over to the bus station, the longest walk since Mount Kinabalu, and bought a ticket up to Birmingham, leaving within the next half an hour: finally some good timing. I treated myself to a hot chocolate with some British pounds, and made the cashier snarl as she saw me drop some old Thai baht into the tip dish. One of the blokes from the plane was already moaning as his bus to Gloucester had been cancelled, 'should have stayed in Hong Kong' he declared. I simply said 'maybe you should' and wished him a Merry Christmas before heading to my bus.

The National Express bus was nearly empty, so I hooked my bag around my arm and watched the snow pass by, admittedly it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd imagined when my trip home was being delayed by twenty four hours! I had a nice sleep before being woken by the man behind me phoning his wife, friend, maybe even boss, to let them know that he'd had a perfect trip back from Perth and wondered 'crisis, what crisis?' with each one. I'm glad he had a nice trip back, but I didn't, and I really didn't need to hear him relaying how crisis-free his trip was to all and sundry. He got off at Birmingham airport, so I had the next half an hour in peace at least.

We arrived a minute before scheduled, after which John picked me up in his new company car, apparently the last one 'broke'. We drove over to a truck stop to meet Dad, but he was late as he was ferrying Mark and Carrie to the doctors in their ill state. We walked through the snow to a snack van, but were dismayed to hear the Brummie yell 'we've got nothing here, we're just leaving'. No yummy bacon sarnie to warm us up today. Dad arrived soon after and the drug swap was complete as me and my bags were piled into Dad's car, which was also a new one as the old car had 'broken' too.

Another half an hour and I was stepping through the doors of 24 Coniston once again, having travelled across a little chunk of Southeast Asia. I wonder where's next.