Getting Better

"It's getting better all the time, I've got my wings and I can fly, I will fly to you..."

Here's hoping eh?

Things are looking up, but there's still many ways in which it could not happen, and at the moment that seems to centre around the fact that hundreds of planes and thousands of crew are out of position, and that flights will still be cancelled due to that for a fair while after planes are flying normally again.

The story I've imagined as the dream scenario is already happening though: one of the people they interviewed coming off one of the first flights to land at Heathrow, a flight from Vancouver, had been booked on that flight all along, and whilst he was sharing the plane with folk who'd been trapped for days etc etc, for him it went off as planned and there was nothing too out of the ordinary about his journey.

That would obviously be brilliant, but as any Gills fan knows, it's the hope that can kill you... then again, stuff like big important trips to Wembley have been successful twice as many times as they haven't in recent times...

BA are concentrating on getting their long haul services up and running first, which is encouraging, and I'm not due to arrive into London until Monday morning, which is five days from now, but the better the chances get the more you start to believe and the greater the uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach gets, along with that little voice going "it could still very easily go the way of the pear".

If my backside did manage to get onto a seat I'd obviously now prefer to fly straight through and not bother with a 'relaxing, jet lag-easing' stopover in revolutionary-ready Bangkok, but at this stage there's about as much chance of 'tinkering' with your itinerary as there is of Arsenal winning the league. Not that I'm too worried. If I find myself in Bangkok I'll be a happy man, and staying out the way of protests and slaughter for 24 hours shouldn't be too hard going by current news. It won't be a spot of shopping and a wander round town before a swim and a massage, but a kip and a feed in a hotel near the airport will more than suffice.

Fingers crossed!

Some of the secondary not-so-serious stuff is starting to spill out now an'all - this story here says Qantas aren't taking any new European bookings until the middle of next month, but you can get a quote for a single-journey econony seat on a BA flight for next week - for a mere seven grand. Business and first class seats have been 'adjusted' to reflect the new circumstances as well, by about forty percent.