Tuesday 6/10/2015.
We only managed a couple of hours’ sleep on the plane. We weren’t given breakfast. Clearly vegans don’t eat breakfast on long-haul flights. Or was it punishment because we’d refused to eat the stinky bean roll thing they’d tried to force on us on the flight out to America? Unlike other passengers, vegans aren’t given a choice of menu items on long-haul flights, which is why we always carry snacks.
Dear god the woman in front of us was possibly the vainest person we’ve ever been in the presence of. She spent the entire 11 hour flight reapplying foundation (she was already wearing it) for ten minutes at a time, then she’d constantly put her hair in a ponytail, take it out, mess with it, put it back in a pony, twist it around, repeat. Just before we landed, she put her hair in a ponytail, then took it out as soon as we’d landed. She spent the whole walk to baggage messing with it. We were tempted to cut it off. If you have to spend 11 hours tying and untying your hair on repeat, clearly you should shave it off because it’s interfering with your life.
Phone Home
We landed in Heathrow at 12:15 p.m. As we were approaching baggage reclaim, we were going to text mum to say we’d landed. We couldn’t find Stormborn anywhere. We emptied the rucksack. Not there. Lynx had taken photos with it on the plane then hadn’t put it back. It must have either fallen on the floor or disappeared down a seat. The panic stations were armed. We went to find someone to ask who we should speak to. He sent us back down to baggage reclaim to find the Virgin Atlantic desk. We found it and informed the man behind the desk. He took the details then told us to come back when we’d got our bags.
Our bags didn’t come until 1:30 p.m. What took them so long? Did they give our suitcase a tour of Heathrow? Our coach was due at 2:10 so we were starting to panic. Lynx returned to the desk but nothing had been handed in. They wouldn’t let us back on the plane to look for it. Even though we knew our seat number so it would have been a quick retrieval. We’re guessing it’s a security issue in case it was a ploy to plant a bomb. The worker at the desk gave her the number of lost property to phone when we got home, after the cleaners had been. This wasn’t looking hopeful. We would have consented to a pat down before entering the plane, and to be accompanied by a guard.
Last Leg
Our coach was on time. We slept until we reached Newport. We slept much better on the coach than we had on the plane. Probably because the passenger in front of us wasn’t messing with their hair for the entire ride.
We got home at 7ish. Puppydog (our lurcher, Bandit) was so excited to see us that he didn’t know what to do with himself. He was running back and forth along the settee. He’s never normally that excited. He couldn’t settle until the evening. We put our duck, Peking, and the rabbits, Ghost and Drogo, to bed, had ice cream (proper food at last) then spent the evening unpacking and washing our clothes. Living the rock and roll lifestyle. We went to bed at our usual time, so we hoped we didn’t get jet lag.
We didn’t get jet lag, and even after weeks of checking lost property online, we didn’t recover our phone. RIP Stormborn the 1st.
Read Day 4.