20/10 Skype is the word

Thursday 20 October . . . SKYPE is The Word.

After urgent emails to Hayley that proved fruitless, I was poised to head to BB, but decided to try Skype first. In short . . brilliant result. Registered, bought $16 credit, rang the bank (32c for 9 minutes) all sorted. They wanted to alert me to the fact that I withdrew $150 from an ATM yesterday morning, after drawing thousands in China. This opens a new vista of communication with family and friends. We are quite delighted. Next time your phone rings . . . beware . . it might be Athens calling!

We suddenly noticed the post office across the street. Four visits later, we had packaged up and despatched two small parcels of paper and jimjaws (including the Zodiac charms) back home so we don’t have to carry them round the world. The fridge magnet collection is already too heavy and expensive to send and is too precious to risk. It will fly in my pocket(s).

We don’t fly until 1am tomorrow and have booked the room tonight for convenience. We are just the teensiest bit excitivated because tonight is the night we have booked Premium Economy – the FlatBed seats. This gets us free luggage, free meals, obsequious service, priority luggage recovery, boarding and disembarking at our leisure AND licence to ponce up to the reserved Priority checkin counter while the peasants in the economy queues look on enviously and mutter about that old faggot with the young blonde. So it will be worth every cent.  Oooh and we get reclining seat/beds.

Well, here we are at the airport and it has all been quite disappointing. There was hardly anyone to impress -  barely 3 dozen, split between the flights to Perth and Paris, all looking quite serene. At least there should have been someone we knew from Perth, so we could have dropped “Oooh well WE are going to Paris actually . . . Premium Economy”. Another hour before we board. There probably isn’t even a swanky lounge we can sit in – just the waiting area with all those . . . French. They wanted to see our rail tickets from Paris to Venice at checkin . . evidently the French will wish to ensure that we do not linger unduly.

To enter the boarding gate all passports were thoroughly studied by police with magnifying glasses.  Is there something going on in the world that we are unaware of?  Have never seen such scrutiny before.