Home at last.

I have made it safely back to my home in Scotland.

I shed a little tear as my plane took off and flew out over the west coast of the continental United States.  There was something very final about crossing that threshold and scooting off into the dusky clouds.

The man sat next to me was very interesting.  He was probably an old man full of boring war veteran stories to some people, however he had joined the US Navy in 1942 and volounteered to become a submariner, and he was happy to regail me with all sorts of tales from his youth and military service and to me was rather more interesting than Cowboys and Aliens starring Daniel Craig. 

My in-flight entertainment system had travelled and lived through WW2, had gone on to travel as a submariner and in other capacities since then had witnessed and taken an interest in the development of all sorts of technologies I have only ever read about.

He had a robust, humourous, and forthright view on lots of things.  He told me about growing up, getting his first firearm (aged 10), shooting rabbits and selling them to the local Butcher, and bits and bobs from his life.  He retired aged 72.  I think he was a bit gutted to have retired so early.

At one point during a tale he stopped, and said hello to in what I think was Punjabi, to a passing Sikh man who was on his way to the toilets.  The Sikh man gave him a very warm greeting back.  Turns out that my in-flight entertainment system had lived in India for a while.

Turns out he lives a few miles from my sister in California.

I was entertained by this gentleman until a lady sitting a few seats away asked us to be quiet, presumably so she could get some sleep a couple of hours into the flight, or around 7pm Pacific Time.  Not really bedtime, but we obliged.  This flight from LAX is 11 hours and arrives mid-morning.  It's probably a good idea to sleep a bit.

The part of the plane we were in was quite noisy so we had to speak loudly to make ourselves understood so that put a bit of a dampener on things, however we still did exchange a couple of jokes at feeding times.

Transfer in Terminal 5 at Heathrow was rather less interesting than on my outbound journey, however it did appear to have been snowing a little in the last few days which I know does cause some considerable problems in that part of the world.

After disembarking, I had my picture taken, my passport perused and my boarding pass scrutinised many, many times.

Gavin came to pick me up in Aberdeen and gave me a very welcome lift back to my house.

Back to work on Thursday.