Changi - Heathrow - Manchester

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OK, technically it was still late on Thursday when we re-boarded QF9 for the Singapore to London leg, but it seems as good a place as any to start Friday's entry! This leg was fully booked so there was no longer a spare seat in our row. In fact, as far as we could tell, there didn't seem to be a spare seat anywhere on the plane.

It really is a long haul from Singapore to London!! I can't remember the last time we actually flew from one of the Asian hubs to London. Maybe never, because we have tended to fly to Manchester via Frankfurt on earlier trips. And then there are the trips where we have explored Norway or visited Mont St Michel and Paris or cycled from Brugge to Paris before going on to the UK. Those destinations may only be an hour to two hours closer to Asia, but it does seem to make a difference to how you feel at the end of the trip ... or am I just getting older and less resilient??!!

Anyhow on this leg we dozed a bit before they served dinner ... or was it lunch again? After eating I didn't think that I felt sleepy so I started to watch Haywire - a rather B grade spy thriller. It was so riveting that I fell asleep after only about five minutes of the movie!! After sleeping through the whole movie and then some we woke up and had a bit of a stretch. Neither of us was game enough to go up the stairs to Premium Economy for a sticky beak. We might have to do that though on our flight back to Australia from LAX to MEL??

Feeling wide awake now, we had another go at watching Haywire. It might have been a bit B grade, but it starred the likes of Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum and Michael Fassbender with Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas in supporting roles. Funnily enough at the end of the movie Bernie reckoned it was pretty naff, but I thought it was OK. Usually I am the harder marker. Maybe I was swayed by the likes of Ewan and Channing? Although Ewan played an A class baddie!!

After Haywire, Bernie went back to sleep and I watched The Artist which I wanted to see while it was showing, but it was on pretty limited release in Melbourne. I wasn't sure about it to start with as it is a bit strange watching a recently released movie that is in black and white and silent!! By the end I could see why it performed so well in this year's movie awards because it was very well done and had a very moving story that was beautifully delivered. I even shed a tear or two which was why I didn't watch War Horse - so much for that plan!

And finally we landed at Heathrow Airport just before 6.00am which was about half an hour later than our scheduled arrival time - we must have had a head wind?? We had to disembark at Terminal 3 and take the bus to Terminal 5 for our connection to Manchester which is always such fun ... if you like being thrown around the interior of a bus by a driver who fancies herself as the Michael Schumaker of the Heathrow motor racing circuit!!

Over in Terminal 3 we had to join the queue for passengers with British Airways connections to British destinations. The signs said that we were supposed to form two queues to pass through immigration - one queue for UK and EU passport holders and the other for all other passport holders. But we were told ignore the signs and form one queue. And that was going sort of OK until one of the staff started playing construct-a-maze with the poles and tapes that were supposed to be channeling the passengers towards the two immigration desks that were operating this morning.

This crazy woman kept moving the tapes from pole to pole and re-directing passengers first one way and then the other until everyone was completely confused. Then it turned out that she was trying to reinstate the UK/EU and All Other queues, but one moment she was directing all of the UK/EU passengers to the right only to be redirecting them to the left five minutes later??!!! We were OK because we had a bit of a time buffer before our flight to Manchester. Some other passengers were getting very stressed though as their boarding times and flight times were getting very close. Some passengers who drew this the attendant's notice were fast tracked to the immigration desk, but others were simply ignored without rhyme or reason.

The Immigration official who (finally) cleared our entry to the UK noted that we were off to 'Staly Vegas'. What? we said. Staly Vegas, you know the gambling capital of the North. Who knew - we've never heard to it referred that way before. Of course we know all about Bris Vegas, but apparently Stalybridge is the UK's Vegas wanna be.

And then it was off to be screened again before we could complete the final leg of our journey to Manchester (Stalybridge). We could not believe the number of travelers at this point who were sorting out their liquids into the obligatory clear plastic bags. And so much stuff in containers over 100 mls that was having to be discarded. We passed through at least two points where there were staff stating and re-stating the rules and yet, when we actually reached the screening point, there were still people who hadn't discarded non-conforming containers and didn't have their allowed liquids in a clear plastic bag. The young family in front of us caused such a hold up while all their liquids were sorted out.

Gee they're tough at Heathrow though. Even I got into trouble for trying to overload my plastic tray. Honestly, I put the iPad, the Kindle, my liquids, my scarf and my camera bag into one very generously sized plastic tray and it was far from full, but I was instructed to put the camera bag in a separate plastic tray all on its own!! At least I was able to comply with that instruction pretty quickly and proceed through the X-ray machine - which I cleared without any trouble.

Well, I cleared the X-ray machine without any trouble, but Bernie set it off even though he took his belt off and put it in the plastic tray. Normally in these circumstances we would expect to have to take our shoes off so that they could be put through the scanner or perhaps to be gone over with the hand held scanner, but no, the staff went straight in for a very intimate pat down. Bernie was quite surprised by just how high up his inner leg was checked!!!

Our flight to Manchester departed the terminal building right on time, but sat on the tarmac for half an hour before we actually took off. This time must be factored into the flight time though as we arrived in Manchester on time at 9.00am. At the baggage carousel our bags were amongst those first off and both of them came out on the belt within a few bags of each other. The last time that we collected our bags at Manchester it turned out that only one of them has made the transfer at Frankfurt!! It's always a relief when you arrive at a destination with all of your luggage.

We went out into the arrivals hall to be greeted by Kath and Albert and then out into the cold. The weather in Manchester pretty ordinary for our arrival - only about eight degrees celsius, wet and overcast. We had been checking the forecast for Manchester during the week so these conditions were not unexpected!!

We didn't do much today because it was just too cold and wet to think about going out for a walk. We went into Ashton with Kath and Albert after lunch to change some money into Euros and Turkish Lira for next week and dropped into the Tesco supermarket in Stalybridge on the way home.

Back at the house Bernie watched the Giro D'Italia in real time rather than catching up with it in the wee small hours of the morning as he does in Melbourne. Well, Bernie sort of watched the Giro D'Italia ... until he had a power nap before dinner!! He completely missed the sprint to the end of today's leg. Kath was going to let him sleep through dinner, but Albert thought that it would be a better idea to wake him up by dripping water on his head.

After dinner we both had a short power nap to prepare ourselves for a game of cards with Kath and Albert. Albert announced to us that he has resolved not to moan about losing at cards!! Bernie predicted that his resolution would be broken before we went to bed tonight. Sure enough, Albert was having a bit of a moan (admittedly mild by his standards) by about the third round of 'Jo'. The first game of the European card-playing season went to Bernie.

We probably should have gone to bed then, but we were feeling quite alert after napping earlier in the evening so we proceeded with a game of 'Blobs'. I had a dreadful run of four blobs in a row, but then rallied later in the game for a win. It is most unusual for me to prevail at Blobs. I think that I recouped the loss that I made at Jo!!

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