Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
It’s been a funny old week.
It was with a lot of trepidation, after my flight from hell to Blighty, that I left the comfort of the Wheatsheaf and made my way to Heathrow for my flight back to Q-Land. Terminal 3 was, as usual, packed to the rafters with people jetting off to exotic places and my first bit of good luck was walking through the door of the terminal to see the Q-Airways First Class check-in desk straight ahead AND no queue.
After gaining my boarding card and making my way through security I wandered into TGIF’s thinking a pint or two was in order as I still had two hours before take-off. Now this is where it went a bit pear-shaped as the only lager they sold was “wifebeater”. Oh dear I thought to myself, as I took a sip of the first pint, now I know why there is so much air-rage. Mind you, saying that, it had totally the opposite effect on me and I don’t even remember the plane taking off.
I woke up 30 minutes before we landed and was first off the plane, first off the coach and first through immigration, in fact it was a total of 15 minutes from landing to me winging my way to the office in the taxi which must be some kind of world record.
The dreaded jet-lag raised its ugly head and I started to flag about 3pm and thought that a pint or two in Garveys before the supermarket run would liven me up and I bumped into my old chum QP and his visiting pal KEG.
Both KEG and QP had the wives in tow and as QP introduced me to KEG I thought to myself “now that’s an interesting name” — now I know why — and it was a taxi home for yours truly as I think we emptied at least one keg, maybe two.
I surfaced at 2pm on Friday and after the first cuppa and my eyes finally focused in I noticed that the house looked like somebody had emptied a skip or two of sand in the hall and the kitchen. “Where’s all that come from”, I mumbled to myself and then remembered reading in the GDN on the Web that there were a few savage sandstorms blowing across Q-Land. OH NO! Where’s ‘Er Indoors when you need her!
Only took me four hours to clean the floors and polish all the furniture and by the time I had unpacked my case, had a shower it was 8pm before I got to Garveys and was joined by Bangalore Berty for a few well-earned pints. Berty’s been out on the razzle quite a bit as the wife and saucepans have gone back to Paradise Island to tie up a few loose ends after their recent move to Q-Land, and I am sure we will be hearing a lot about his escapades in the coming days.
Anyway, it’s good to be back (queue imitation) but even better as I’ve got an old mate, Stretch from South Africa, who’s arriving on Paradise Island on Sunday and it would be very rude not to jet across for a quick visit next weekend to show him the sights.
