Flying home

These next few blogposts are not going to be posted in the correct chronological order. Never mind. I wrote this one by hand, 38000ft above sea level somewhere over Labrador which was still white and frozen. I had forgotten about winter.

Today has been as confusingly multicultural as the rest of my recent days. I began the day skimming through the 104 pages of The Daily Mail (I had no choice of paper) over a very English breakfast in the Roebuck pub lounge and chatting to Terry, the landlord. Then round to Emma's place to say goodbye where, with Alexander on my lap, we watched an old episode of Bagpuss (1974) and where I overheard Sha talking excitedly to her mother on a Skype call to Beijing in Mandarin Chinese.

George and I didn't say goodbye in quite the way we'd imagined because when my bus arrived at the bus stop he was about to help a handicapped lady across the road.

I had a French-style breakfast Chez Gérard in the departure lounge at Heathrow, not quite of the same quality as my breakfasts in Paris, alas, while reading a few more chapters of Benoîte Groult's novel La Touche Etoile.

On the 'plane I heard some Mozart on the iPod as we took off, then watched The White Ribbon, the much talked-about black and white film in German, and Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces in Spanish, that latter film being particularly good.