Don't wanna be like common people

Shock! A post to my blog. Double shock! Not a post about walking. Although we did walk into and around Kingston the other day, so I should add another couple of miles or so to the running total, but I can't be arsed. It'll get added to properly over the next few weeks because Ruth and I are off on holiday, and our holidays always tend to involve lots of walking; this holiday in particular does because we've planned it that way. We're off to Sydney, Tasmania, Sydney again, and Ho Chi Minh City.

As I type, however, we're still in Blighty. Specifically we're in the BA FIRST lounge in Heathrow's Terminal 4 (no T5 chaos for us) near gate 10. One of the very few times we're able to take advantage of my for-one-year-only Gold status with BA and we're larging it to the full. Well, as full as possible -- Ruth tried to get an Elemis spa treatment and was told they're fully booked for the evening. This despite us being pretty much the first people to check in for the flight (10pm last night), and to drop our bags off (7pm this evening) and having made a beeline straight here (left the house at 1815; in the lounge at 1925). Oh well.

Quick aside: Ruth's reading the New Statesman. Not the most popular periodical in a place like this, I'd wager (and I really would, capitalist pig that I am. Though the odds would be shocking).

Anyway, having left a genuinely fat feline at home we are, spa notwithstanding, living la vida fat-feline. A bunch of cheese and strudels and sarnies and bagels already washed down with some champers, I'm now tucking into the sweets with relish (NB: not actually eating sugary goods covered in hamburger condiment) with a glass -- a glass, no less! -- of lager, while Ruth has a coffee and some kettle chips. All this is taking place 2 hours before we take off for Australia, ensconced in the best business class seats the upper-deck of a BA 747 has to offer.

I'm so glad and, despite my tone, somewhat humbled bordering on embarrassed, that I was lucky enough to have had the fiscal and temporal opportunity to take those 2 months off in 2006 and flit around the world. It's that which kick-started this holiday because, combined with a bit of help from my previous employers, is how I earnt enough miles that Ruth and I can now do what we're doing. Come November I'll be on the outside of these lounges, wistfully remembering what it was like to be a scruffy Morden pikey drinking himself daft and stuffing his fat face with salmon and cream cheese bagels, in amongst the power suits and blackberries and people asking "which risottos do you have this evening?". Granted, for a further year I'll be that self-same pikey drinking himself daft and stuffing his fat face with whatever fare the business class lounges serve, but after that... well from this distance, it doesn't bear thinking about.

Right. Enough of that. This holiday will have to try very hard not to rule. Look out bro, we're on our way. See you in 24 hours or so.