'Happy' New Year

To paraphrase the laconic brilliance of a certain donkey called Eeyore: Happy New Year. If that's what is. Which I doubt.

Yes - we're back in dear old Blighty, in all it's cold, grey, damp and dowdy splendour. The trip back from Australia? Well, let's start by saying this: it's a bloody long way. Mind you, at least we were comfortable for the majority of the flight, which is more than can be said for those poor blighters in economy. Christ, 24 hours in one of those seats is enough to make you come limping off the plane like a Victorian orphan with rickets.

So how is it, I hear you ask, flying half-way around the world in a day? Well, not too bad really. A bit tiring. The following is a tidied-up version if a post I made on that noteworthy website, V-Flyer (if you're really sad, you can see it with all the ratings and related replies here). And it goes a little something like this...

A month of almost unbroken sunshine is something truly special, especially in December and particularly if you’re British. It wasn’t so much that it was hard to believe that our four weeks of honeymoonin’ were coming to end; it was just soul-wrenchingly depressing to contemplate the fact that not only were we going home, but we were returning to cold, grey, wet and miserable England at the bleakest of bleak mid-winters.

But what a month we’d had! Hong Kong and the incomparable Four Seasons; the sights and sounds of Sydney; sailing from Port Douglas over the Coral Sea in an authentic Chinese junk; eating stunning Italian food, drinking outstanding local wines and batting kamikaze flies from our faces in Melbourne.

For now though, we were sat in the late morning sun at a street-side café in the beautiful little town of Avalon. As we’d had to vacate the Beach Retreat at 11 (ish), we decided to partake in a spot of lazy brunch before heading for the airport. Freshly squeezed orange juice, coffee brewed from beans roasted on the premises, organic back bacon and the creamiest of free-range scrambled eggs. Boy, was I looking forward to getting home and tucking into a McMuffin? (Answer: No. Not one little bit).

After brunch we dawdled up and down the main drag in Avalon looking for, and failing to find, an elusive last minute gift. When you’re hoping to stumble on that one curious knick-knack, object d’art, or coffee-table-talking-piece to encapsulate your travelling experience, you quickly realise that a boomerang, a ‘genuine’ bush ranger’s hat or a cuddly cross-eyed koala toy just ain’t going to cut it.

Giftless, and with pretty low spirits at the prospect of leaving Avalon, Sydney and the Southern Hemisphere in general, we loaded ourselves into our hire car, set Nora Neverlost for Sydney Airport (yeah, that’s right, we named our Satnav) and started to make our way south down the coast. Around each bend we caught glimpses of yet another golden sandy beach, and every glimpse was like a dagger to my heart. I checked the weather back home on my ‘phone – 4 degrees and sleet. I glanced out of the window; sunny; warm; not a cloud in the perfectly azure-blue sky. Everyone was wearing shorts and flip-flops. Everyone looked happy. Damn them.

As we approached the city the beaches fell away and we suddenly found ourselves under Sydney. Nora had sent us through the Harbour tunnel, rather than over the bridge as she had the previous week, and now we found ourselves driving in and out of various other tunnels which, I guess, run under the central business district. One thing Nora really should have twigged to, however, is her absolute reliance on satellites and the rather simple reality that tunnels and satellite communications aren’t the best of friends. So, whilst travelling along a four-lane highway with multiple intersections and large trucks at either side of us the best she could offer was, “At your next opportunity, turn around”, over and over again. Yeah, we'd love to lady, but we do have a plane to catch.

Our love affair with Nora over, we hit the 'off' switch on the Satnav and, by following a mystic route laid out for us - possibly by an Aborigine shaman - involving a system of little pictures of aeroplanes on the road signs, soon found ourselves at the airport. We dumped the car with those nice people from Hertz - although not before doing our best to clear the detritus of crisps, muffin crumbs and god knows what else from in and around Tizer’s car-seat – and very quickly found ourselves at a pleasantly queue-free Upper Class check-in. Trust me, it's the only way to fly when you've got a two-and-a-half year old and the best part of 12,000 miles ahead of you.

We’d checked in online check-in the night before and secured our preferred seats, and the very cheery agent confirmed that all was well and we just needed to check our luggage and Tizer's push-chair. Her reaction to the sight of her push-chair being packed up and man-handled onto the conveyer elicited a high pitched “Nooooo – miiiiiiiine!”, with small toddler fingers at full stretch grasping for a wheel, a strap, anything. The check-in agent quickly pointed out that they had courtesy push-chairs and one was swiftly brought over for us. Tizer, placated, placed Betty – her stained, battle-scarred doll and constant companion, with one permanently shut eye and an interesting aroma about her – into the push-chair and wheeled her merrily off in the direction of security.

A similar experience faced us once we got to a very quiet security area, when one of the staff tried to take Tizer’s recently acquired packet of crisps from her, insisting they had to go through the X-Ray. This was rectified when another kindly and much more grandfatherly member of staff intervened and let her walk through with her crisps, craftily swiping them off her then handing them straight back before she even knew they were gone as she went through the metal detector. Hell, she even offered him one after that, though he wisely declined, noting perhaps that most of them had by this time clearly been sucked clean of salt and returned - still damp - to the packet.

We made our way to the Air New Zealand lounge that's available to Virgin's Upper Class passengers and which, for all we saw of it, was very nice. I literally had just enough time to make myself a G & T before the flight was called. We hadn’t even realised we’d been cutting it that fine, to be fair, so necking my drink we went straight back down to the gate to meet our lovely, shiny Airbus 340-600.

Maybe we’d flown too much in the previous four weeks. Maybe it was the fact that our holiday was all but at an end. Maybe it was the prospect of one hell of a long flight ahead of us, but as we eased our way via priority boarding down the tunnel toward the open door of the plane, Mrs V and I actually looked at each other, wrinkled our noses and said, “Eugh; plane smell”. I know – sacrilege.

Perhaps we were just feeling a tad jaded with all the travel, but the familiar smell of plane air-conditioning, aviation fuel and hundreds of gently warming economy meals was a stark reminder that we had 24 hours of this, followed by another flight to Manchester and a trip on the M62 before this particular journey could be deemed as ‘over’.

So, a deep breath and Tizer – who clearly isn’t burdened by the same world weary woes as a pair of thirty-something travellers – charged headlong onto the plane with us following obediently behind her.

Tizer once was wedged into her seat belt with the help of a couple of pillows and we began a particularly long taxi out to the runway. This really didn’t suit our darling daughter, who seemed to have made the decision that if we weren’t actually in the air, there was no way on god’s clean earth she was going to keep her seat belt on.

She quickly discovered that, for all the pillows to prop her up and special covers to stop her unfastening her seat-belt, the easiest way to get out of it was to simply stand up. There was no screaming, crying, or throwing of tantrums, you understand; she was just a bit bored and wanted to have a look around the cabin. She even smiled and waved at one or two of her fellow passengers which, whilst not exactly in line with current CAA regulations on the use of seat belts, was certainly very neighbourly of her.

Regrettably, this continued shortly after take off, and it was only a spot of quick thinking on my part and the resultant appearance of a large bag of M&Ms that remedied the situation. The downside was that, strapped as I was into the seat opposite, I couldn’t actually reach her, so had to resort to throwing the M&Ms at her. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting her to catch them in her mouth (although that would have been cool, wouldn’t it?), but thankfully every third or fourth chocolate morsel I threw her way did land on her seat, which allowed us to coax her into sitting down and getting her back into the seat belt again.

Once the seat belt sign was finally turned off, Tizer wasted no time in retrieving the sweets that had failed to make it to her seat, despite her mother’s best efforts to stop her from eating them off the floor. I don’t know; the cabin may be ‘Upper Class’, the child – sometimes – is most definitely not.

I ordered my usual Tanqueray No. 10 and tonic with wedge of lime and ice, and was bitterly disappointed to get a Bombay Sapphire, a wafer-thin sliver of lemon and single shard of ice. On further investigation it turned out there was no Tanqueray on board, but when I went up to the bar to sort things for myself there was a profusion of lime and enough ice to sink the Titanic. For reference, the lime is the green coloured fruit, whilst the lemon is yellow. Are these the same crew who are expected to use a defibrillator on me should I collapse from a heart-attack? It worries me…

Mrs V ordered and received the same drink but – you’ll be unsurprised to hear – made considerably less fuss than I did. For dinner, I ordered some kind of duck salad followed by salmon; Mrs V went for the salmon too, but chose the soup option for her starter. I think I managed to find an episode of the Simpsons that I’d only seen seven times or so whilst waiting for dinner to appear and, to show there were no hard feelings, I gallantly accepted another sub-standard G & T.

The food was good, with the salmon coming out tops for once (past attempts by Virgin have ended up tasting rather like fish-flavoured cotton wool). The duck was fine, a bit too cold in a straight-out-of-the-fridge kind of way, which may have been the reason for its lacking much flavour. Mrs V also marked the salmon very highly and declared the soup as most palatable. I finished off with a lovely plate of cheese and some brown sticky stuff that later turned out to be quince jelly and was rather good.

Wine wise we both went white for a change and I think we plumped for a Sauvignon Blanc. Whatever it was, it was very good. I watched Shrek 3 throughout, which really ought to be the last of the franchise if anyone involved wants to retain a few shreds of artistic integrity. And bear in mind, I was watching this after a glass of champagne, three G & Ts and half a bottle of wine, so by all rights I should have been laughing my chuffing bits off. I know, Jonathan Woss is safe in his ‘Film’ role.

Tizer and I had our customary wander down the back of the plane to check out the unfortunate wretches in economy. Poor souls. If you transported cattle like that for 24 hours you’d have the animal rights people on your back. Returning with daughter dear I beckoned Mrs V to join me at the bar (oh yes, they have bars at 35,000 feet you know) and we indulged in another glass of that nice white before falling into conversation with an Aussie chap who I recall being called Craig, but my wife swears his name was Greg, so, in the interests of fairness and to avoid an argument, we now call him Graig.

I didn’t want to sleep on this leg and since Shrek was so bad and the bottle of wine in front of me – the contents of which were swiftly disappearing – was so good, I decided to stick around with Graig for a while. And, when a delightful young member of the crew was good enough to offer us another bottle – well – who were we to argue with her? She was also kind enough to nip into Economy and nick a few bags of pretzels, bless ‘er, with which Graig was terribly impressed.

After what felt like half an hour or so, Mrs V reappeared to inform me that Tizer was sound asleep and, more disturbingly, to ask me if I was aware that I’d been drinking at the bar for over two hours. Really? Well, that would certainly explain the profusion of empty bottles, as well as the inflated sense of well-being and self-importance. Had, I enquired, she met my good friend Graig?

She stomped back to her seat muttering dark mutterings under her breath, but even I was becoming aware of how much I was sinking. It was alright for Graig, he was only going as far as Hong Kong – I had another 12 hour flight ahead of me, and it was highly unlikely that I was going to be able to keep this pace of drinking up for that long unless someone was going to provide me with a liver transplant somewhere over Iran.

We finished the bottle, of course, it would have been rude not to, but caution, as they say, being the better part of valour, I bid Graig the kind of farewell one usually reserves for old school-chums or rich relatives, and wound my weary way back to my seat and a bit of mind-numbing telly.

I must have been at the bar a hell of a long time, 'cause my episode of King Of Queens was rudely interrupted by an announcement that we'd soon be landing in Hong Kong. Tizer was good enough to wake up at this time, but didn't seem to have the fight in her - or perhaps the appetite for M&Ms - to act up over the seatbelt again and we had a quiet descent and landing at Hong Kong Airport.

Feeling the effects of my 'sesh' with Graig, I dutifully followed my wife and child off the plane and up to a lady who kindly stuck a sticker on my shirt (this, I later discovered, was to identify me as a transfer passenger). We then, rather confusingly, had to go through security screening before being allowed to carry on to the Clubhouse. I was pretty much on automatic pilot by this time and was more than happy to keep my head down and follow the crowd.

We made our way to the Virgin Clubhouse (another perk of flying Upper Class) and resisted the temptation to hang our jackets in the cloakroom, this being the spot where they spent their 3 day holiday whilst we were in Sydney. We found a seat near the TV and Mrs V managed to snag a shower for her and Tizer, but I, to my shame, needed to nip down to duty free for some cigs. To be fair, I really shouldn't have been allowed to wander around a large foreign airport alone as I really was feeling rather peculiar, but throwing caution to the wind I risked life and limb on a far from stable escalator, located and bought said cancer sticks then - and this is the really stupid bit - thought it might be a nice idea to go and smoke one of them.

There's a 'smoking room' at Hong Kong Airport (more of a hut than a room) which is the sort of place they should send people who have tried nicotine gum, patches, tablets and injections to stop smoking, but still find themselves on 80 Lambert & Butler a day. Five minutes in there should put you off smoking for life. And yet, in my somewhat tired and emotional state, this is where I ventured. To my credit, I did manage three of four drags on my cigarette before the smoking hut started to revolve, first clockwise then - sickeningly - counter-clockwise, with a bit of a wobble on it.

As none of my fellow smokers seemed to have noticed this, I realised that in my slightly sozzled state - and not having had a cig for the best part of a day - that it must be me. I quickly exited the hut with as much dignity as I could muster, then realised that trying to walk back to the Clubhouse through a revolving, topsy-turvy airport would either get me arrested, booted off the next leg of the flight, or both. So I leant casually against a wall a pretended to text a dear friend (possibly Graig?) until the airport slowed to a bearable shimmy, then slowly, delicately, made my way back to the Clubhouse.

Which was just as well, because people were starting to file out to board our Heathrow bound plane when I got there, and my rather relieved looking lady wife turned me around and guided me back to our gate.

Settling back into our freshly cleaned suites I quickly realised that this leg was going to be a lot quieter, so spying some empty suites I quickly snaffled three or four bottles of water. If past experience was anything to go by, I was going to need them, and my mouth was already starting to feel like it had recently been exhumed from Oliver Reed's grave.

It doesn't happen very often when I fly, but I actually fell asleep before take-off, and I didn't wake up until the seat-belt sign went off. I changed into my PJs, intent on getting a decent sleep. Tizer was already in the land of nod and I wouldn't be far behind her. Mrs V was dragged away for a manicure with the inflight beauty therapist (yes, they have those as well) and I suddenly realised that the smell of dinner from the galley was starting to make me peckish.

Having really enjoyed the cheese earlier, I thought this would make an ideal late supper, so explaining to a crew member that I wanted to get off to sleep soon, she rushed me out a plate of delicious cheese before doing the main meals round. OK, and a glass of port - I was eating cheese and biscuits, people, you have to have port!

I put the cheese away rather sharply, and catching the eye of the FA again, she was good enough to bring some more and this time fetched me an entire basket of biscuits. And one last glass of port, but I promise, that was it!

Having eaten enough cheese to ensure me dreams of opiate-induced clarity, I settled down to sleep in my lovely bed (yes, that's right, we have beds in Upper Class too). I woke after about three hours due to the cabin temperature doing an impression of the surface of Venus. I downed one of the bottles of water from my secret stash, through my duvet off and slowly managed to get off to sleep again.

I woke up about three hours or so out of Heathrow and, with Mrs V and Tizer still asleep, went to the bar and treated myself to a breakfast of orange juice and after dinner chocolates. I know, I'm a pleb. I had time to change into some clean(ish) clothes and make myself beautiful again away from the rush, as most of the cabin were still away with the fairies, then I settled down to play a few games on Mac.

The breakfast round proper came around, and I managed a danish and a coffee, not being the biggest fan of bacon, eggs et al at such an early hour. Then the cabin was being cleared and we were slowly beginning our descent toward Heathrow.

After bouncing through dark clouds for most of our approach we finally broke free and the smudged and dirty lights of a cold and foreboding London could be seen from the window. God, it was depressing, and we were still probably a good couple of thousand feet above it.

Landing was uneventful, getting the doors open took an eternity and waiting at the gate for the push-chair seemed to take as long as the flight itself. The gentleman delivering the push chairs and prams seemed to be suffering from TB or - at the very least - consumption, which I dearly hoped he would be good enough keep to himself. Oh, and not only was the lift out of order, but the escalator was turned off too so we all hand to carry Tizer, her pram and all our hand luggage up two flights of stairs. Welcome back to Britain...

We managed a very quick sausage sandwich in Virgin's 'Revivals' lounge where the staff, as ever, were absolutely delightful. Aware that things were getting tight for our BA flight up to Manchester and that we still had to negotiate getting to the other side of Heathrow, we scadoodled as fast as we could toward Terminal 1.

Things were going well until we got to the lifts that go up to departures, where we had to wait for 15 minutes whilst an East European family completely commandeered them to transport their 8 children and luggage, which comprised of various dirty cardboard boxes tied up with string. Finally we made it to BA check-in, where three check-in staff had a ten minute conversation on the best way to handle the push-chair. Then, once they'd agreed that it could go via Outsize Baggage - and this is my favourite bit - they were good enough to tell us that we'd missed our flight by five minutes.

There was no fight left in me, and we were very fortunate in that they got us the last three seats on the next flight at no extra charge. Back at Manchester our "Welcome Home!' experience was completed by Virgin sending a Volvo estate instead of the people carrier with child seat we'd been promised, but we were past caring by this time and managed, with the help of a truly pleasant and apologetic driver, to squeeze ourselves in.

And there endeth the 'trip report'. Once we were home we reunited Tizer with her grandparents who were waiting for us at our house. She was excessively pleased to see them, bless her. I guess a month is a long time when you're only two.

After a cup of tea and a natter with the parents we hit the sack and slept the sleep of the dead for 4 or 5 hours. The thing about jet-lag is that you can't allow yourself to get too much sleep in the day else you'll never get back onto local time. We also needed to be as refreshed as possible as this was, lest we forget, New Year's Eve. To be fair, as far as our body clocks were concerned it was the early hours of New Year's Day, but we weren't going to let that spoil us having a few drinks with family and friends.

It was tiring, but we managed to get our sorry arses to the pub, sink a few pints, tell a few holiday stories and see the New Year in. We were home and back in bed for about half midnight, I think, then we slept for 12 hours straight. I'm still tired now, to be honest, and I think it will take a few more nights to start feeling normal again.

Oh, I almost forgot. I'm cold. Chilled to the bone cold; colder than I've ever been in my life. I can't see how I'll ever be warm again. Unless we went on holiday somewhere nice and hot. Australia, perhaps? Now, there's an idea...