20/04 - Well, I screwed today up. Just before I went to bed I decide to play Sim City for a little bit, in an "I'll stop after such-and-such an event" kind of way. Somehow time rapidly passed, and when I finally stopped playing it was 6 am. As I did not wake up until half past 12 I decided to stay at home, had a look at some work and then went to my French class in the evening. This went pretty well, I had a stunted conversation in French with a chap named Emilio then I had a mixed kebab from the guy on the corner on my way home. One thing I did achieve today was picking up my train ticket to Paris from the station, which hopefully I will not need. On my way to French class I noticed a pretty spectacular sunset, much pinker than usual (possibly due to the ash cloud). Also a helicopter flew by, in stark defiance of the closed airspace...
21/04 - In an attempt to compensate for yesterday's preposterous lethargy I tried to make it in a little earlier today, arriving at exactly 10 o'clock. I stayed in the office until 7, which I feel is respectable, then James, Sarah and I headed over to Jody's flat in St. Genis, where he was cooking us dinner. He made a Thai green curry from scratch, and it was delicious. There was a lot of wine and an amazing dessert too, brought by Tanya and Paul. It was glistening, octagonal and delicious. This was only the second time I have ever ventured over to St. Genis, the first time being when Sarah and I wandered over last June or so. I quite liked the flats, they were a little scruffier than our ones, and Jody's bed situation looked decidedly more temporary than mine (he has two sofa beds, as opposed to my one permanent double), but on the upside they are right next to a river and a big Carrefour which was still open when we went in at 8pm, unlike all the supermarkets in Geneva at that hour. On our way home James, Dan and I stopped off at the airport to see if flights seemed to be going - it was about midnight and the place was absolutely empty and eerily silent - there was noone there apart from a few unfortunate folk who were camping under an escalator, awaiting a morning flight home, I assume.
22/04 - I got up and went straight to the airport, where I queued for ages at the information desk and was informed that my flight should definitely be running this evening. I then managed to get to the train ticket office and cancel my train with two minutes to spare before it left. I enquired about the possibility of changing my evening flight to an afternoon one, but she quoted me a change fee of "Three hundred…" at which point I laughed and left, not requiring either the rest of a the number or a currency to know that I couldn't afford it. I headed back into town, found somewhere to buy a massive merguez sausage sandwich and found a nice park near the Gare Routiere which was pleasantly sunny in which to eat it.
I made it back to my flight with plenty of time to kill (which I did by sitting in the sun in the car park), and eventually made it back to London about 11 hours after leaving my house this morning. I got a text from Kelly as I walked through the arrivals gate informing me that she was going to be late. I could already see her when I read this, so the intended surprise didn't really work. We went home and feasted on a huge mound of chicken, couscous, amazing balsamic roasted tomatoes and stuff, accompanied by a nice Rioja. I am very glad to be back in the UK.
No comments:
Post a Comment