What's your favourite dish?

Jambo!

The destination was as relaxing as the travel had been (deliberately) punishing. That first hour or so notwithstanding, I went offline for the whole time and settled down into a pattern of pretty much nothing but recreational sleeping, reading, and drinking. I stayed on the resort grounds, no day tours to Stone Town or anywhere else; this was an escape.

The accommodation was pretty swanky. A four-poster bed (with mosquito netting), an enormous bathroom with an enormous bath and two showers, one being outdoors(!), and an outside area with a couple of seats and a table. Housekeeping came round 4 times a day, which is a bit bloody much, especially the 9pm call (and it didn't help that the "Do Not Disturb" thing kept getting blown off the door handle outside). I'd been told at checkin that the mini-bar was free for first use, but if I ever needed it refilled it would be charged. Free mini-bar, you say? Such a shame that this consisted merely of water, fanta, diet coke, and soda water.

Also a big screen TV, on which I watched England beat Sweden 3-2. I did think about going to the bar, but really I was just way too tired to move. Been a long time since I saw England lose a lead or otherwise go behind and not let their heads drop, longer still since they successfully came back to win. Was chuffed with that. And then I slept more. A lot more. Woke up about 11 hours later, which meant I was too late for breakfast. Never mind.

I wandered around the resort grounds for a bit, took a couple of photos, and settled on which shaded longer on which to spend the next 3 hours reading. Then I went back to the room, got changed, and headed out to the jetty bar over the ocean. It felt a little, but not massively, Blood Diamond, being the white guy sitting at a bar by the water in Africa. Went for the Tanzanian beer "Serengeti lager", which I honestly did not expect to be much cop, only to discover that it's almost as nice as Brooklyn Lager, which is my favourite lager in the world. Holy smokes. Three drinks there, then headed back onto land to watch the evening's game in the Library Bar (via a very swift meal at the buffet). Was amused to see a huge England flag hanging up, and a printout of the whole Euro 2012 match schedule on each table. 

As an aside: Zanzibar is mad for football: on the drive to the resort we'd passed probably 7 or 8 impromptu games of football being played, and two club houses. I'd seen Arsenal and other shirts being worn, and one van which had nearly half its windscreen covered in a Chelsea sticker.

Anyway, that was the pattern for each of the 3 full days I was there: sleep, breakfast, lounging + reading, sleeping, drinks on stilts, more drinks with the footy. There were some experiences unique to the days, I guess: on that first trip to the bar I got chatting to the board of directors of a Tanzanian ISP who were there for a strategy meeting, which mostly seemed to involve getting wankered and putting on South London accents while referring to me as GEEZAH and GANGSTA. I turned down their invite to some mad party on the other side of the island (so, 40-odd miles away), what with already being 6 drinks down and there to relax. And also being moderately terrified of the prospect.

On the last full day I thought about doing some exercise. I'd taken my running/gym kit, and scouted the gym facilities, but honestly could not be bothered with it. Instead I improvised a circuit of abs exercises and steps/knee raises/lunges using the perfect-height stone shelf in my room. Oh, and held a plank for 60 seconds, which I thought was pretty good. I actually worked up a properly decent sweat, and the next day my calf muscles told me I might even have overdone it a bit. #projectrollins never stops, eh.

Service was kinda weird. I found most of the bar and waiting staff to be uncomfortably deferential, either unable or unwilling to engage in conversation even when I was the only person sitting at a bar with 5 staff. The friendliest and most outgoing member of staff was the cleaner with a gorgeous smile who unprompted decided to teach me the kiswahili for "you're welcome", "thank you" and "bye bye". They say "you're welcome" a lot.

I got through the Mick Foley book ("Foley Is Good"), Shawn Michaels's autobiography "Heartbreak and Triumph", and Mark Kermode's "It's Only A Film", each in single sittings. Never realised HBK was such a god-botherer; should have read Foley's first book first, especially as so many chapters were stories about "how I wrote the first book"; Kermode's book is bloody awesome.

On the last day I asked at breakfast what time my car to the airport was. They said I had to checkout at midday, but my car would be at 1pm. Since none of the bars accept money, this was going to leave me with an hour of just sitting around in reception. Unimpressed. Anyway, since I was about to embark upon another 29hr 3000-mile 5-flights trip, I took the opportunity to watch a couple of episodes of Air Crash Investigation. I was tickled pink that the first one was about a hijacking of an Ethiopian Airlines flight, ha!

In the end they shoved me in a car straight away. The drive back to the airport was mostly uneventful apart from all the cows, and getting spat at by some kids. Ho hum.

Hurry boy she's waiting there for you

The Brussels Airlines lounge desk staff were a bit confused. I don't think many people fly Ethiopian Airlines from Brussels, but it's Star Alliance and they let me in OK. There was free wifi... for 1 hour only. Which is a bit odd. And I had over 2 hours to kill, thank heavens for tethering, even in mainland Europe. I knew I'd be able to leave right at the last minute, 'cos I could see my plane from the non-balcony next to my table.

Cheese and Leffe Brune (aka Leffe Bruin, aka Leffe (B)ruin) tasted amazing. I mean, like, amazing. Clearly this is not revelatory, what with cheese and beer both being awesome -- but what I mean is, together they actually tasted more amazing than separately. Again, nothing new to most people, but I have such a terrible palette it was an almost religious experience. So I got a second plate of cheese. My diet is ace.

I sauntered to the gate, my boarding pass made the computer beep, and I held up the queue.

"Ah! Mr Foreman. Do you already have your onward boarding pass?"
"Actually no, I don't"
"Please wait here"
...
"So, here's your boarding pass from Addis Ababa to Zanzibar. I'm sorry, it looks improvised, but please, all the information is there and accurate, it's fine"

I don't think I've ever had a handwritten boarding pass before. It said "Class: Y" on it. Y is economy. That caused a bit of a panic later, as I wondered if I'd be able to use the lounge at Addis Ababa.

At checkin they'd told me the flight was very busy, in fact full from Milan, but (I guess because I'd been so early) allocating me a window seat had been fine. So I perched in seat 4L, the last row of business class, kinda half straddling with economy (but with a curtain to separate us). There was one other person in business, a pilot.

Two cabin crew poured me a champagne, one supervising the other: "it's her first time on a big plane". I got used to the seat, which didn't take much getting used to tbh. Ethiopian Airlines is not, in seating terms, radically different from BA's premium economy with a bit more leg room. And in several ways it's worse, in particular the complete lack of personal TV. So no movies, no map, no nothing. There were tiny screens hanging down every few rows but I couldn't see one from my seat anyway, and it's broadcast rather than on demand. So, y'know, not great. I've been lucky enough to fly some of the best business classes in the sky, and it's fair to say that Ethiopian is pretty low down the ranking (though I had a much worse experience on Thai once). But I'm clearly being a bit churlish and snobbish: business class is still business class, the seat was comfortable and the service great.

Straight after take off I was given a beer and a cake. A "local", ie Ethiopian beer, called St George. "Fly Ethiopian, Drink Ethiopian". Nice it was too, an opinion which was later canvassed by the staff who were eager to know what I thought, having never tasted it themselves what with being teetotal.

With no entertainment I had 3 ways to entertain myself: keep a notebook, look out the window, or read a book. The notebook is the reason I end up writing so much here, because I wrote so much there, and have no real sense of how to edit myself. I type too much. But anyone who's ever read my blog knows that anyway.

The Alps are gorgeous. I took a bunch of photos of mountains. I'll put them up somewhere soon, I guess.

The book I was reading is Mick Foley's "Foley is Good". I almost gave up on it when he badmouthed the Misfits - only one of the BEST BANDS EVER - on pages 86-87. Bastard. But since he's a double-hard bastard I'll let him off.

We stopped for an hour in Milan, to pick up passengers. Business class did not fill up, in fact only 2 more people came in to this cabin. But occupying the first 2 rows of economy, immediately behind me, were 2 adults and about 8 kids. Young kids. Loud kids. I tried not to let my exasperation show (apart from on twitter) but even the flight attendants were struggling a bit, and they suggested I move about 3 times. On the 3rd time I did, to row 1. For a start this gave me a view of one of the shared screens, but it also put me in front of the two newbies.

Because I could see a screen, I could now keep tabs on the safety announcement. I'm sure they said we had to turn off PDFs rather than PDAs.

Amharic is definitely one of the source languages for the whole "African languages just sound like clicks" stereotype.

The newbies ended up talking very loudly for the first 3 hours, as it was some self-important businessman dictating to his PA. The staff actually suggested I move again, apologising for my bad luck, but I stuck with it. They were always so friendly, and oh boy did they keep the alcohol flowing. Having already had booze in two lounges and two flights I was heading towards drunk, and by the time the meal finished I was another champagne, two beers and a port in. Oh my. The meal itself was a decent chicken curry, albeit with an Ethiopian "hot sauce" that actually seemed to lessen the spiciness of the chicken, not enhance it. Huh. Maybe my awful palette is still awful after all.

I kipped for a bit. It wasn't the best sleep, and was only about 3 hours, but I've had worse on better seats/beds. It was after I woke that I had the realisation that I might need to *ahem* charm the lounge staff into letting me in, having stepped off a business class flight with an economy boarding pass for the next leg(s). But I was in no fit state to charm anyone, what with being shattered and half cut. I also realised I was 216 pages through the biggest book of the 3 I had with me, on day 1 of a 7 day trip; and that this was, actually, my furthest solo holiday ever which hasn't included Australia. Huh.

Landed at Addis Ababa terminal 2 at about 6am, I think. It was not desperately hot, just pleasantly warm. I was first off the plane and into the terminal, shepherded up an escalator, along a corridor, down an escalator and back out onto the tarmac to get a bus to terminal 1 for Zanzibar.

Terminal 2, from the outside and my short experience of its interior, seems pretty modern and nice. Terminal 1 looked, from the outside, like an old hospital.

Terminal 1, on the inside, is like a hospital. No wards, but a big waiting area and 3 League of Friends shops. And a cafe called "London cafe". Heathrow it ain't. Singapore, Hong Kong, hell, Flagstaff it ain't. But there was a lounge, and I was allowed in, without even attempting a winning smile.

The lounge had all the appearance of a British seaside venue, like the dance hall of a hotel that's seen better days - except without the dance floor, just the chrome + leather seats and mirrored walls that surround it. This was pretty charming, actually: I love the bleak British seaside. I also love serving myself a huge plate of omelette and potatoes, washing it down with an Ethiopian Diet Coke. But most of all - in terms relevant to this experience - I love my "it's always 7am somewhere" attitude to long-haul travel, during which I childishly and unhealthily revel in grabbing myself a beer at 7am local time. That's the very long way of saying I grabbed another beer. And, since I was in Ethiopia now, I made it a, er, Heineken. Go me!

I got online and tried to stay awake. I was blinking for ever longer periods of time, sometimes 90-120 seconds. Another diet coke helped me a bit, but not as much as the increasing panic over whether I was actually going to make it to Zanzibar or not. My flight was showing a 75 minute delay, and the lounge completely emptied of people apart from 2 others. The Dar es Salaam-Zanzibar flight is the last of the morning, despite leaving at 1030 - now 1145. The staff had come round announcing each earlier flight so I did assume they would let us know when ours was finally ready for boarding, but panic got the better of me and I left, went through x-rays, and went to the only gate which had people by it.

Lots of people.

Lots of people who didn't speak English. I asked the first guy I saw who looked like staff if it was the Zanzibar flight; his reply was not in English, but he did push me to the desk where, after a phone call, the woman said "Yes!" to me, put a stamp on my boarding pass for no apparent reason, and waved me away. It was about 1150 and boarding hadn't started, but when it did I was glad to leave terminal 1 and ... be put on a bus to the plane, which was sat outside a gate in the superficially much nicer terminal 2. YOU BASTARDS.

Got on, sat down nice and quickly - row 2 - and got back on the champagne. Ah, how sweet it was. It was actually a much nicer and more modern plane, though still without personal TV screens. Again economy was heaving but business mostly empty, and I was tickled when they announced "our first stop is Dar es Salaam", like on a train. A train to Dar es Salaam, I guess.

The safety announcement said laptops were fine once the seatbelt signs were off, but no laptop accessories. There was a picture of a printer with a red line through it. Who the fuck would take a printer on a plane and try to use it?

The woman sat across the aisle from me was SO AGGRAVATING. She complained about the seat - "is this as far as it goes back? the one on my last flight was much better, you know". She ummed and ahhed about whether to have a champagne, orange, or water. She complained about the wine. She complained about the bread. She complained about a lack of garlic. She pretty much stopped a member of cabin crew every other time one of them walked past to make an issue about something. GRARGH.

At Dar es Salaam she spoke to me. To complain, about the cigarette rage we'd just witnessed. Some people had wanted to pop outside for a smoke, just standing on the tarmac... at an airport while we were refuelling. Like one of the most dangerous places you could do that. The cabin crew were so angry with them, almost shouting. "No! This is an airport! Just go and sit back down!". Madness.

By this point I had turned down a beer. The only one of the trip, I think. I had had a post-breakfast Cointreau though. There was no service on the last leg, you couldn't even undo your seatbelts. It was only a 45 mile flight, after all.

At Zanzibar I was first off the plane, and met at the bottom of the steps by a woman who escorted me across the tarmac to the arrivals part of the terminal. Wow. I already had a visa for Tanzania, which seemed to surprise the staff there. So I filled out an arrivals card, turned around from the desk, and was grabbed by the arm. The guy took my card and passport, handed it to one of the immigration officials at a desk - over the shoulders of about 3 or 4 others, none of that "wait at the yellow line" thing going on here, just total chaos. I reached through the crowd to have my fingerprints taken, just generally being let through the border at arm's length. Baggage reclaim was kinda like Launceston in Tasmania: all the bags individually being humped from a dolly onto a desk, with a scramble to grab them. Mine came in on the second batch and I spotted it, signalling to the guy out back who was picking it up, who in turn signalled back.

He understood. I understood. He brought my bag - just my bag - out, and around, into my hands, and while I was fumbling for a tip whispered "tip. tip. tip. tip. tip" into my ear.

In Zanzibar, it pays to be well prepared, and the well prepared pay.

Stumbling into a bevy of cab drivers, looking every bit the disheveled mess I was, I hunted for a guy with my name on a piece of paper. I failed. So I found someone with the same hotel written down and he pointed me towards my guy, who'd been off making a phone call. Luggage in the back, welcomes proffered, water opened and air conditioning turned on, we were off to the hotel. I was somewhat disappointed by how ruly everything was, expecting - for no good reason, really - the roads to be kinda chaotic as per, say, Istanbul, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangalore, Mumbai... y'know, just that general ivory tower "outside Europe and big cities, all traffic is dreadful" stereotype. But it was fine, not a white knuckle ride at all. Rules being kept, safe junctions, etc.

I tweeted this disappointment 30 seconds before we went past a totalled upside down bus being lifted by a crane. And as we left the town outskirts for the 30 miles to the hotel, my driver was ever more frequently picking which side of the road to use based on, I dunno, essentially nothing. There was less and less traffic and more and more cows. And then a police roadblock outside the area of the island where my resort, along with plenty of others, were.

We arrived. I checked in. I tipped various people. I got online. And then I slept. Hello, Africa!

To Brussels. And beyond?

I'm kinda tired. It's been a long day. A long week in fact. In order to best carry that impression onto the page, I'm going to write - at length, so much length - about what happened. Twitter is your best bet if you want a tl;dr version.

Last Thursday I left my flat with a backpack and a suitcase, headed down the hill, up the steps, over the bridge of Surbiton station, down the steps on the other side... and stopped. Swore. Did the journey in reverse. I'd left my mp3 player at home, as well as my notepad. The latter wasn't so bad, I could always buy new paper, but there's no way I was going to survive a week without music, especially as I'd only just taken delivery of 4 Prince albums. So I headed back, stuffed the missing items into my rucksack, and started again. This was inauspicious, and I could really have done with some auspicion. But in its absence, what I needed most was a bus. Then another bus. Then a tube. And then a plane.

Just the one plane. That's all I knew for sure.

I'd been anxious for a while, kinda inexplicably. On a lot of my solo jaunts, in fact on pretty much all of them, I'm pretty carefree. So long as I've got a passport and a credit card or two then, if push comes to shove, there's really not going to be that much of a problem. So I'm not really sure what I was so worried about, but worried I was. I had a BA flight from Heathrow to Brussels booked for sure, and then, well, hrm. I either had zero, one, or two tickets to Zanzibar. That's not normal. One is normal. Zero and two are not.

If you read the post prior to this, you'll see my plan. The dates had changed but the itinerary hadn't. I had spent the last* of my BMI miles on two one-way redemptions: Brussels to Zanzibar via Addis Ababa (and two fuel stops), with Ethiopian Airlines; and Zanzibar to London via Addis Ababa, Frankfurt, and two fuel stops, with Ethiopian and Lufthansa. I'd booked it weeks ago, paid, and heard of no alterations. Yet 4 days before I was leaving, I headed over to checkmytrip.com and, er, neither reservation showed up. On flybmi.com they showed as being on the original dates, and on ba.com they showed as being PAPER TICKETS ONLY.

Wait. What? Paper tickets? No-one gives out paper tickets these days, and I certainly didn't have any. And why was I looking at ba.com anyway? Well, BA bought BMI, and their IT systems were merging. Badly. I got a bit of solace from flyertalk.com users who pointed me to a "classic" version of checkmytrip.com - "classic" being code for "works properly" - and lo and behold, there was my booking. Dates correct, flights correct, no seat assignments (despite me having done those back in April), and an e-ticket number. Good.

And another e-ticket number.

Oh.

There's a way to check your booking via ticket numbers, directly with Amadeus (the backend system some airlines use). I did that. Both numbers showed up, only one had my name next to it, and an attempt to get the full details just threw errors.

I had tried to checkin online with Ethiopian Airlines. It recognised my booking, had my name and the correct flights, invited me to click ... and then threw an error. Specifically an error saying something non-specific(!) had changed to do with my flights or reservation or ticket, and that I really should call Ethiopian Airlines. In Ethiopia.

I thought about calling (not just Ethiopian, but maybe BMI? or even BA?) to see what the hell was going on, but since I hate phone calls I didn't bother. No, I'd take my separate flight to Brussels, wait, for checkin to open, and see what happened. All part of the adventure, right?

I'd checked in on my phone for the BA flight, so as soon as I got off the tube I went to a bag drop desk and, um, paused. The BA app wouldn't show the boarding pass, because it just kept crashing. Way to go, Android. Turns out it throws a fatal error if it can't get a data signal, something it was struggling to do. Eventually it worked and I resolved to just keep the damn thing on screen as much as possible.

At security I ended up in a queue behind what appeared to be Tetsuo. Or maybe Barry Sheen. That metal detector sure did love him.

It had been a long time since I'd been in a BA lounge. Because of my BMI/Star Alliance allegiance I'd hardly flown BA for years, and when I did I had no means of getting into a lounge. I'm not forking out silly money for business class intra-Europe, and I don't have any shiny cards. Except I do! Hurrah! Thanks to my Amex Platinum - taken out purely to get a bunch of miles, of course - I've got a Cathay Pacific gold card despite not flying them since 2006. Gold with them is equivalent of Silver with BA, and otherwise known as Sapphire across the whole oneworld alliance. Yeah. Uh. Whatever. Basically this means I can get into the business class lounges when I fly BA, so that's what I did.

"Hello! Here's my boarding pass , and, er, I've got this card"
"OK Mr Foreman, you're fly...ing....econ...omy...let's...see... this card isn't on the booking?"
"No, it's not. I want to collect miles with BA. But this card lets me in, right?"
<squint>
"Right, yes, yes it does. I'm going to add 'oneworld sapphire' to your booking. Welcome!"

They may or may not have pronounced the correct typography. But, y'know, yay! [Like]

I'd decided to start using foursquare.com while heading to Heathrow. Essentially because I wanted to do location stuff on twitter, not Facebook, which I've mostly given up using. So when I got into BA lounge I did my very first checkin.

Oh dear. It auto-tweeted some horrifying thing about being a certified newbie. I was so ashamed. But, as usual, the first flush of free alcohol helped to nullify the shame. As is customary, I started with a London Pride. Mmm. London Pride. From a, er, tin. Bleh. But, free.

BA lounge food has got a lot better in the last couple of years. Self-service chicken korma was very decent, and I washed it down with a second Pride and a Malarone anti-malarial tablet. Being the reading type (and the writing type) and the somewhat nervous about health type, I read the leaflet about side-effects. The nurse at my surgery had warned me to take paracetamol because I was likely to feel ropey. The leaflet listed symptoms that over 1 in 10 people get. That's a huge proportion! And then the symptoms which "up to" 1 in 10 people get, and then the ones where they just don't know the frequency, OK? STOP ASKING.

One of the symptoms is "crying". Like Rob said: these were, potentially, emo tablets. Was giving them to a melodrama queen like me such a good idea? I s'pose avoiding malaria is kinda worth it...

I didn't have any paracetamol. I had no idea what gate my flight was at (and it could have been at the satellite terminal, which adds a good 20 minutes to the walk). And I didn't want to drink too much, in case I had to be properly with it in Brussels. So I upped, 2 drinks in, and headed out to Boots.

By which I mean WH Smith. I walked all over T5 and could not bloody find Boots, apart from a big "coming soon: Boots!" sign. Even after following the "Pharmacy --->" sign I failed. I did see a lot of duty free shops, which reminded me of the ones in Sydney which were dishing out free spirits samples at 9am back in January. Just as I was thinking, pah, Sydney beats London, that's not good, I spotted a lass handing out free Jura whisky. Didn't partake, but TAKE THAT, Australia.

I had a gin and tonic on the flight. And that's it. There was no food service. To be fair we were only in the air for about 40 minutes, but they used to do a lightning service even on the shortest hauls. I mean, this isn't a big deal, but just a bit surprising.

So. I'm in Belgium. I've got my suitcase back. I've found the Ethiopian Airlines checkin desk. I've got a €50 note in my pocket, a shitload of US dollars in my bag (useful currency in Africa, especially in countries where it's illegal to take their own currency out. Like, say, Tanzania). And I've got an hour to kill. There was a bar called "Café Stella Artois" which sold Leffe, and it was tempting, as was the American diner, but instead I just perched on a seat and fretted.

5.15pm - 3hrs before takeoff - arrived, and I sauntered up to the business class checkin desk. Handed over my passport and a printout of (one of) my e-ticket(s).

"Tanzania? Visa on arrival?"
"No, there's a visa in there"
"Oh, yes. Great!"

and pretty much before I knew it, there I was, checked in all the way to Zanzibar, my final destination. Hurrah! Not that I had boarding passes for both legs, mind - for some unexplained reason they couldn't issue the second flight's pass there at the desk, but I was assured that "someone will find [me] at the gate". Well alrighty then. I was off to Africa, via the Brussels Airlines lounge, a bottle of Leffe Brune, a Stella, and a whole lot of cheese. And Milan. But, eventually, it would be new continent ahoy!

Farewell Diamond Club

Long time since I wrote a blog entry about anything, let alone flying. But after the phone calls I made this morning, I feel compelled to write a pointless farewell lament, addressing the void about the soon-to-be-departed Diamond Club, FlyBMI's extraordinary frequent flyer scheme.

I discovered the frequent flyer game in 2006, when Yahoo! first sent me away in business class, to Taipei. I was hooked immediately, and soon enough subsequent events in my life gave me both the impetus and opportunity to exploit my new hobby to the fullest. I went around the world in comfort, spunking all my savings at the time on a marvellous (and well blogged) trip to Sydney, Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Auckland, Perth, New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Gibraltar, and Vancouver (though not in that order, duh). I discovered FlyerTalk and mostly lurked around the forums absorbing information like a sponge. Pretty soon I learnt that, for a UK resident, the BMI Diamond Club scheme was where the real action was.

Here's the deal. BMI were a member of Star Alliance, making a massive network of airlines and destinations available to spend miles on. Better yet, Diamond Club allowed one-way redemptions, unlike most other airlines. And better better yet yet, they had an extraordinarily generous scheme whereby you could pay just half the number of miles, and top it up with cash (and, certainly in comparison with paying for the same flights, the cash amount was pretty small). And, fuck me, triple better triple yet, you were allowed a stopover en route so long as you didn't backtrack or go too far out of the way. Individually these things are great benefits, but together ... wow.

I took out an affinity credit card with MBNA and started putting basically all my spending through it (all, that is, that didn't go through my BA credit card; for a while I was running with two programmes). I would sometimes buy miles, sometimes take out a new credit or charge card to get a bonus boost. Occasionally I even flew with a Star Alliance carrier for money, and credited real flown miles to my account. A rare occurrence for sure! And overall, somehow, I managed to roll with a balance that let me go to Australia roughly once a year since 2009. In business class. For less than a grand return.

A grand is a lot of money to spend and I don't do it lightly, but my bro and family live in Australia and it's important to me to see them when I can. It's also important to me to fly in business class 'cos I'm addicted, and for value for money this couldn't be beat: almost every time I went, a restricted (no changes, no cancellations) economy fare would have cost me pretty much the same amount of money. Paying for flexible business class would have cost somewhere between £3000 and £6000 each trip! And that just for a straight return, direct, no stopovers...

I flew with Air New Zealand via LA and Auckland. I flew with Asiana via Seoul. I flew with Thai via Bangkok several times. I got to fly Turkish Airlines and their fantastic 77W aircraft. I got to spend a shitload of time staring at timetables, maps, redemption charts, and reviews of business class products. I started outside of the UK to save money (it was cheaper to buy a single to Helsinki and stay overnight than to start in London, thanks to the UK's Air Passenger Duty on long-haul business class travel). Basically I got to be a proper comfort/luxury geek, and I fucking love(d) it.

But, oh, heavy sigh. BMI have been bought by BA. Not that I don't like BA, I do, I really do - but BA are a member of a different alliance: oneworld (ironically the alliance I first went round the world with, who got me properly addicted). Diamond Club's benefits will all disappear, I'm sure of it. I don't want it to end but it is, so I'm treating myself. My final redemption was made this morning.

Diamond Club as we know it dies on April 20th. I had to act pretty fast. Some recent gambling wins and a surprise tax rebate meant I could afford to treat myself and I decided to pull the trigger. My priorities were: fly business class with Star Alliance airlines I'd not tried before; do a lot of flying; get at least one new passport stamp; go somewhere nice (a distant last priority). And after an Easter weekend when I am basically housebound, kept inside by a mixture of illness, rail engineering works, and shitty weather, I'm pretty sure that what I've ended up with does the trick LIKE A BOSS.

• Brussels to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) via a technical stop in Milan, with Ethiopian Airlines.
• Just under 4 hours in Addis Ababa airport, presumably in the Ethiopian Airlines "cloud nine" lounge.
• Addis Ababa to Zanzibar (Tanzania) via a technical stop in Dar Es Salaam.
• 4 nights in Zanzibar, including my birthday.
• Zanzibar to Addis Ababa via Dar Es Salaam.
• Another 3 hours in Addis Ababa airport.
• Addis Ababa to Frankfurt via a technical stop in Khartoum (Sudan), with Lufthansa.
• 9 hours in Frankfurt, for a side-trip to Mainz or Wiesbaden.
• Frankfurt to London, with Lufthansa.

I've never been to Africa; Gibraltar's the closest I ever got. My own criteria for "have I visited a country?" is based entirely on whether I've been landside; airside at airports doesn't count. So, sadly, this trip is only guaranteed to add one new country to my list: Tanzania. I hope to nip outside in Addis Ababa briefly for breakfast on the way out (you can buy a visa on arrival) to make it two. The Khartoum stop is only for fuel/technical reasons, no-one will get on or off much less get beyond immigration. Never mind, eh?

I have flown Lufthansa, but not in business class and not their A330-300 plane (which has something approximating "real" long-haul business class seats, as far as I can tell). I've never flown Ethiopian Airlines. Reviews of both are mixed: in the realms of luxury travel, neither are top notch, and they won't compare with other carriers I've been fortunate enough to fly (BA, Qantas, Air New Zealand, Thai) either in the air or on the ground. But I don't expect either of them to be terrible either, and in particular it looks like I could be lucky with the food. Which is good, because Ethiopian food is awesome.

This is a crazy trip. Insane. I have to get to Brussels (either a separate flight or Eurostar), then take 5 flights which will feel like 9 thanks to the stops. Both flights between Ethiopia and Europe are overnight. The prospect of travelling solo to East Africa is filling me with epic trepidation. The hop between Dar Es Salaam and Zanzibar is only 45 miles! And rather than come straight home, I've deliberately engineered a stupid and no doubt exhausting side trip to somewhere fairly random in Germany, just for the sake of flying Lufthansa and, well, why come straight home...? The logistics of the whole trip are ridiculous.

I can't fucking wait.

11 months of parkrun times

I'm no statistician, but there's really not much of a pattern here, is there? It doesn't look like I'd expect at all.

Official history is here.

Can't sleep. Birds will anger me.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a news item on BBC Breakfast. It featured some pigs. My reaction was to shout KILL THEM WITH BIRDS.

I blame Phil.

As it goes that's twice I've blamed him for something this week. The first was for getting me to enter a half-marathon next April; this time it's for me being the UK's number one Angry Birds HD player. So that's the iPad game, not the iPhone one. Here, let me show you.

See that there 'dsf' is me. I've got the best score, as logged in the in-built online leaderboard system "Crystal", in the UK. I'm also 12th in the world.

Fuck me.

It's not down to Phil that I'm (currently) the best in the UK, of course. But it is down to him that I played the game in the first place. Back in mid-June a mate and I went to Warsaw for the Big Four Sonisphere debut, and we stayed in Phil's flat. The morning of the day of the gig, after a fucking huge night's drinking, out came Phil's iPad for us to have a play with. Actually just for me to play with; Chris refused to touch it because he knew that to touch was to want and to want was to buy. iPads ain't cheap.

I, on the other hand, was convinced I had no use for one. I touched, thinking, what use is this device? I don't like ebooks. What else can this thing do? So I had a bit of a browse, a bit of a tweet, a bit of a play with the UI. Yeah, it was alright, yeah, the keyboard wasn't as bad as I expected, yeah, it was shiny and pretty, but ... meh.

"Here, have a play of this".

Angry Birds HD. Level one. What do I do? Just fling the bird from the catapult to try and kill the pig and destroy the stuff around it. Oh, OK. *fling* *squawk* *oink* *snort* *crash* *cheer*.

Ooer. This is fun. This is lots of fun. This is lots and LOTS of fun. Yes, I know the gig starts soon, but look, I just need to get through the next level. And maybe the next one.

We made the gig, and it was fucking awesome (though Dave Mustaine's voice is shot to pieces now), but that was it. Seed sown. I needed an iPad. Even the fact that I pulled a few days later didn't detract from the fact that I had to play Angry Birds HD. My justification for this utterly frivolous and profligate purchase was this: it was my birthday a couple of weeks later.

First, I played through the levels. It was enormous fun. I stayed up 'til all hours playing it, and gave it 90 minutes or so each morning before work too. Then I went back to 3* every level -- though before managing this, I lost my save game and had to start from scratch, grr. I 3*ed everything, I checked my scores, and I was in the top 20 worldwide for each episode. Yay me!

Some terminology: when you fling birds to kill pigs, you're playing a level. The levels are grouped in 15s or 21s into worlds, which themselves are grouped 2 or 3 to an episode.

So, there are a lot of levels. Yet on a combined basis, I was pretty bloody good at this.

More levels came out while I was on holiday, for 2.5 weeks, without my iPad. Whoa! Got back and 3*ed them all in moderately short order. Things changed on the scoreboards, and you could now see your overall place, all scores combined. And I was getting higher, because I'd gone back to the start and played each level again until, on most of them, I eked out anything from a few hundred to tens of thousands more points (such improvements causing me to shout GET THE FUCK IN or HAVE THAT YOU CUNTS quite a lot).

I took a break... to play Angry Birds Halloween HD. No leaderboards for that; universal opinion is that it's a harder game. I 3*ed every level in 3 or 4 days.

Back to the original. By now I was checking my position on a per-episode or per-world basis, spotting where my deficiencies where -- because that was also where the most points available to me were, clearly. And I saw something I could achieve, a natural target: I wanted to be number one in the UK.

10 or so days ago I was about 170k points behind that guy. Firmly in number 2 spot, a good 170k or so ahead of number 3, the only way was up. I got to about 140k behind.

The bastard played it some more. He was 200k ahead.

I've put in about 20 hours of it in the past week I think. Maybe even more. Playing the same old levels. Figuring out where my 3*s resulted from getting a score only just above the threshold, thus meaning there was a lot more available to me. Hitting shots which gave me an extra 10, 12, or 15k on a level. Realising I'd missed out an entire world on my first rerun. The points came thick and fast.

Suddenly I was 120k behind.

Then 80k.

Then 40k.

Then 12k.

Then 6k.

Then last night. Fuelled by 5 post-work pints, I was simultaneously determined to not go to bed until I was number one, and pissed and drowsy enough that I almost missed my stop on the train on the way home. But I had to get there.

Then 500 points.

Then half an hour of frantically starting a level, throwing a bad shot, giving up. Picking levels at random. I'd completely forgotten which levels I had mentally noted were ripe for a few more points. I was just going all over the show, on the verge of achieving this desperately sad ambition...

... *fling* *squawk* *crash* *oink* *snort* *cheer*

An extra 1k.

500 points in the lead.

UK number fucking one.

HAVE THAT.

I don't think, in my entire life before or after today, I will ever be the best at something in the UK in such a public and measurable way. The only score charts available are on Crystal, and I top them. It's a game that millions of people have downloaded and played, and of the hundreds of thousands to have done so on the iPad, I am 12th best in the world and best in the UK. In this insignificant (yet fun) sphere, I currently fucking own. Awesomes.

I know exactly why I like Angry Birds. The reasons are similar to why I like Guitar Hero so much, or pinball. Not to the exclusion of other game types, but these are, to me, games of pure skill. You have a task, this task is always the same, and you just have to do it. You don't have to do lateral thinking, you have no AI opponents, you have no real opponents, you just have a start point that's identical and an aim: to do better than you've done before. And because of the lack of opponents, because it's not a match with a win/lose outcome but only scores, and because there are no external factors weighing on what happens, games like this are the perfect experience of practice, improve, practice, improve, practice, improve. And I like improvement.

Like my newer hobby of running, fuelled as I am by times and distances (as well as weight loss and stuff), I am competitive against one main competitor: me. Beating me is what's most important; conversely, losing to me sucks. And if I can then, after beating myself repeatedly, look up, survey the landscape and see that I'm better than everyone else? Well fuck me, I call that an achievement.

Three months, 27 minutes and 51 seconds in the life of darrenf

I finally got my sense of achievement.

Warning: in what follows I lay on the misery and emo melodrama thicker than an Ed's Diner milkshake. But this isn't a negative post: I feel amazed, proud, impressed, happy; also, humbled and indebted. All because I did a 5km fun run for charity the other day, on October 24th, in 27 minutes 51 seconds.

We'd only been going out a month or so when Ellie told me of her theory -- no, her belief -- that pretty much anyone can run 5km, and she can teach them how. I say "pretty much" because we obviously discount people with proper physical barriers to doing so, but your common-or-garden fat fuck like me was a definite candidate. In 3 or 4 lessons she'd have me running 5k in one go.

I scoffed. Not like scoffing a pie (though, actually, I may well have been doing that at the time), but like pshaw, tish, pish, balderdash and piffle my dear. Not everyone can run 5k, I said. I can't run 5k, I said. See I've got dodgy lungs, have had forever, dad smoked 60 a day when I were a nipper and I've got bronchitis. Hospital one Christmas time when I was young, inhalers, steroids for me lungs. Broken. So, no, you won't get me running 5k, I said.

Bollocks, she said. Listen here, she said (I'm going to stop with this "I/she said" crap soon). Anyone can run 5k. The fact that I can walk 13 miles fucking proves it. All I needed to do was learn technique, to take her up on her offer of lessons. Thus the mutual challenge was laid, both of us wanting to be right... though, of course, I didn't really want to be right. I wanted to be fit enough to go running (I could write quite a lot about sibling jealousy/inspiration here, but I won't), but I honestly and genuinely believed it would, or could, never happen.

It's not my place to comment on Ellie's motivation for taking me on as a pupil. I think and hope she recognised that I wanted to do it, and didn't think I was doing it just to (try and) impress her. Though I certainly wasn't wanting to fail, I did expect to... (Ooh, lots of italics)

July 25th 2010. My first lesson. For the first time since those fucking horrible road runs at middle school in which I always came dead last, I went running.

We're not actually sure how far we ran because the GPS in use (my Sony Ericsson Elm) was, we later discovered, a load of horse shit in terms of accuracy in tracking. But it does seem that, er, we ran 5k. On my first attempt. And it didn't kill me.

She's good, is Ellie (she's great, in fact). We walked briskly to a local park; we did warm-up stretches; she got me running slower than walking speed. It's about technique, see. Running is a gait, not (necessarily) a speedier version of or progression from walking. It's just different. That's it, that's lesson one: this is how to run, slowly, on flat ground.

One lap in, my lungs were sounding like shit. I thought maybe I was going to be right. So did she. I was wheezin' and rattlin' and making all kinds of noises. Thing is, I sounded like it on the second lap too. And the third. Because, as it turns out, my lungs just sound(ed) like shit. That's all. They work. They're not awesome, but they work well enough, and fuck me if I hadn't just run 5km. I was amazed and happy and high and proud and all that stuff. We went out and celebrated with awesome Mexican food and then beer; I won at pool, and Born To Run came on the jukebox.

The high lasted all day.

And then, back at work, I came down. Hard.

See, it all came too easy. I did it first time. I thought I was embarking on some kind of project, lasting few weeks at least, a journey from zero to 5k. But I did it straight away. Running wasn't easy in itself, but what I mean is, it just took one attempt. Now this isn't Guitar Hero, where I love playing through entire games just once and never putting the disc in again, 5*ing every song as I go. I was expecting, and (despite what I may have claimed at the time) wanting, it to be a challenge. I wanted to work for it. I wanted that feeling of doing something repeatedly and improving, improving, improving, striving for and attaining a goal. The fact I just turned up and did it started to piss me off.

What's more, I felt daft and a bit miserable and regretful about the past. I'm a fat unfit fuck. I never believed I could be otherwise, and I never felt like anyone else had thought I could either. That was me. Occasionally I'd gone through periods of weight loss, and of doing a lot of walking, but it never really made me feel fit. I used to play a lot of table tennis too, but that was, well, just me playing games. Suddenly I kind of felt like I'd wasted a lot of time being unhealthy without properly knowing it didn't have to be like that. I'm not a stupid bloke, but I felt bloody stupid. It should have been a "wow, OK, I can get fit!" high but I looked backwards instead of forwards.

There's a standard anecdote I wheel out on occasion about my family: mum couldn't swim, didn't have great skin, and was great with money, whereas dad was an ex-RAF physical training instructor plus inveterate drinker and gambler. My brother and I are very much the products of our parents: he got the fitness and fiscal prudence, I got the bad skin, drinking, and gambling. "Who got the better deal?"

Anyway, lesson 2 had hills. None of Ellie's prior pupils had ever managed the hill twice in their first attempt, but I did. Again, I ran 5k. Again, the surprised happiness and pride was shortlived, replaced by another bout of, oh, so it's actually easy, even for me. Why the fuck did no-one tell me this before? The bigger sense of discovery was about the wasted time, not that I had this ability which I should take advantage of.

I can't half be a miserable fuck sometimes.

A couple of weeks later, I went out for my first solo run (my first one fueled by negative emotion too, for that matter). I hated it. But I ran again not long after. And again. And again. Sometime in August I went for 6 runs in 9 days (I also dropped in a 13.1 mile walk home from work). And toward the end of the month, I decided I needed a target. I entered a charity race, for 2 months later, deciding that by then I would run under 30 minutes.

I should say here that I'm under no illusions that I'm a decent runner or ever will be. I know 30 minutes is a very modest time. But considering I was running 34-36 minutes I thought it was realistic. I like realistic targets.

Then, still in August, I ran 31:08 and 31:20. In early September, while coming down with a cold, I ran 30:59. Huh! 30 minutes by late October was going to be a breeze, I thought...

Pride comes before a fall. I couldn't get close to those times again. People and The Internet led me to believe I would be enjoying running soon enough, but I was convinced I wasn't. Nor was I losing weight. My times weren't improving. I took part in some organised races having discovered parkrun, yet I ran slower, despite being given the impression that race situations would improve my speed. I was kind of fucked off by all this. I wasn't enjoying it, so I needed motivation, and the only one I could think of was times. I play games, I like scores, and I want to score better. My role models told me to ignore times, but they themselves care about them, so, y'know...

For a while I tried to just treat running like a chore which had to be done, like washing up -- "if I want to be less fat I have to do this", and hoped I would then at least enjoy the feeling of having got that day's run out of the way. It didn't work. No, I needed scores, and I had a plan to improve them. I was going to Australia on holiday, taking my kicks, and would run sub-30 before I got back god-motherfucking-dammit. I knew I'd have loads of spare time and that Sydney and Melbourne are full of good running. 29:xx would be mine upon my return, a full 10 days before the race.

It wasn't. On my first run, I was so slow to 5km that I thought, OK, I'm not that knackered so I'll just keep running, see what a 45 minute run feels like... and actually carried on for an hour. 8.26km. Slow. Again came the temporary high of having done something beyond what I'd done before, again came the longer low of, oh, so running for an hour also comes easy.

I ran 5k. It was slow. I did a lot of walking, including hills, and got some moderate sense of being fitter than (ever) before, which was positive. Then I went to Melbourne and stood in the MCG surrounded by tens of thousands of runners, 10ks and half-marathons and marathons, feeling pretty shitty about myself. Everyone looked so pleased (except my bro, who was fucked off at only running a marathon in 3 hours and 7 minutes for fucks sake), yet muggins here who'd never run in his life 2 months previously was fucked off because he couldn't knock a minute off his PB.

The following morning I went for another anger run. 3 weeks until the charity run and I had still only broken 31 minutes once. I had never run a single kilometre under 6 minutes, yet somehow I had to run 5 of them back to back. So I set off around the park running as fast as I could, desperate to get a sub-6 minute kilometre under my belt and see how I felt after that. But I didn't even manage one. I ran 30:54, a personal best for sure, but only the tiniest slither had come off and it was still nothing close to my target. 3 days of my holiday left and 2 weeks 'til Kempton.

Next day I ran 10k. You know how this works. First attempt, first success. Except... there was a glimmer. The downer didn't really happen. I kind of hurt after the run. My legs knew they'd done some work. Sure, during the run I'd been miserable as fuck -- in particular I remember an almost physical sensation of being punched in the stomach when I first looked at my phone to see how far I'd gone, convinced it was about 4.5km only to discover it was 3.3km. I felt like crap and dreaded the fact I had so far to go.

But at the turn, I felt OK. I thought, fine, I'm just doing the same as I've already done. There was a 200 metre stretch or so where I had the wind blowing hard directly at me, which was unpleasant, but towards the end of the run I was even speeding up. I finished on a high. I, uh, might have enjoyed it. The pride and the happiness stayed. The reaction from my bro, no, the repeated reactions from him, because he takes so many attempts to take information in (yes, I ran 10k. yes, in one go. yes, in 1:06:11. yes, me. yes, 10k. yes, 1:06:11...) delighted me. I like making my bro proud. I like making Ellie proud. I felt pretty good. And I came back to the UK.

On the Saturday, I did another parkrun. I was better than before, felt better, was even hard for Ellie to catch up at a couple of points, but still not close to sub-30. And then, and then...

Sunday. Another anger run. Angrier than before, almost than ever before. Not just anger related to running. I was in a desperately low and hateful mood. And I ran 29:23. So, er, 90 seconds off my personal best. What the fuck? Where did that come from? I'd actually set out to run 10km and had no intention of pegging it; I guess the adrenaline just fuelled me. But fuck me my mood was so low that the high was shorter than ever. I did it. Great. So what? I was on my own, miserable, bored on a Sunday afternoon, going back to work the next day after 2.5 weeks off. I texted Ellie and posted my result to the internet, but got no reactions from anywhere until quite a while later, which in my parlous state was too late to make me feel any good about myself. I convinced myself it was a one-off. Fine, my body has it in me, but is it repeatable, will I do it when it matters, at Kempton? Will I fuck as like. After finally running sub-30 with a week to go, somehow my confidence was at its lowest yet. Miserable twat.

I didn't run (and hardly slept or ate, but that's a different matter) for the next week. Skipped parkrun the day before. Went to Kempton. Ran 27:51.

What. The. Fuck.

I didn't realise how fast I set off. If anything the kms seemed to be arriving slowly. I didn't check my watch and Ellie was carrying my phone. I was struggling hard at the end, the last km was pretty tortuous. Yet even that would have been a personal best for a single km prior to that day. I ran the first 2 both under 5:20. How the hell did that happen? But I don't think it was a fluke. Sure I need to run another sub-30 to say that "that's my time", but my body can do it, has done it.

Like a score on my xbox 360, I only need to do it once to get the (sense of) achievement. And doing it by such a margin, on deadline day, when it really mattered to me, I finally got it. I get to say "go me!" and mean it. Go me!

My bro and everyone else who listened to me bitch and whine and moan about how my running was going when manifestly it was going well. Would I listen to them? Would I fuck. Sorry about that.

But I owe the most to Ellie, who has (figuratively) added a string to my bow, and given me a way to get and keep fitter and healthier. That's awesomes (yeah, you heard me, plural). She also had to put up with a boyfriend and pupil full of all the complaints and shit that I've detailed up there, having no clue about my largely involuntary beat-myself-up technique for self-motivation. Like I said: awesomes.