Two long hauls

Back in Canada after a week in the Old Country.

I brought my mother with me on the return flight after a night in Hampton Hill at The Roebuck. Heathrow yesterday was more crowded than ever, so that didn't go down too well, nor did the fact that Ottawa airport staff failed to put her suitcase on the conveyor belt so that we had to wait for it to be delivered (today). Even so, we have a few things to be thankful for. We didn't have to take off our shoes during the security checks and Chez Gérard saved us from misery in the Departures lounge by serving us tasty bowls of soup with a basket of fresh bread (and anchovy butter) in their restful, civilised surroundings. Furthermore the in-flight entertainment system only broke down once, so that I could watch a film in Hindi as well as a film in German right the way through, and AC889 managed to bring us to land just before the advent of the severe thunderstorms that were to last three hours.

I'll continue with the notes I wrote so as to keep myself awake on July 28th, my mother's birthday, on the 7:05 "Express" bus from Heathrow to Cardiff.

...I'm sitting on the bus—the driver, in a very Welsh accent, announced that "this bus is returning to Wales." Flight AC888 landed half an hour early. There'd been no more than two minutes' queueing for my baggage check in Ottawa, same story at this end. I had two seats to myself again on the Boeing 767, saw the sun set over grey clouds to the north west and less than three hours later there it was again in the north east over Ireland, so the night seemed very short. I also got a good view of the sunny Laurentians after take-off and of Wiltshire and Oxfordshire on the descent. Over Newfoundland I saw a thunderstorm from above and to the side, the blackness flashing with electricity and the anvil cloud flattening out above. Magnificent. When not gazing out of the window I listened to a podcast about the founding of St Petersburg and watched a film about Kazakh shepherds who lived in yurts. This film featured rather a lot of noisy camels and stillborn lambs, but I liked the people in it who spoke in their own language (with subtitles). It was called Tulpan. Coming into London we circled above Slough so as to land after 6 a.m. then swung over the city, giving me a great view of the Thames estuary, the Thames Barrier, the Millenium Dome, Greenwich Park and the series of bridges crossed by double deckers.