Back in Blighty

Landed safely in Heathrow at 5.40am on 4th September.

Strangely enough there will always be some drama as soon as I touch down in Heathrow. The last time it was the unbelievably long queue at the immigration, bomb scare and missing-taxi episodes.

This time round we were wiser. [Or so we thought].

We registered for IRIS on the outbound leg of the journey to avoid the massive queues at the immigration upon our return. Hence long queues were sorted. It took less than 2 minutes each for the computer to verify our iris before we headed to collect our luggage. Not long after, maybe 20 minutes at most before our baggage appeared on the conveyor belt. Great everything is on track, I thought to myself. Two down. Huzzah.

There was no bomb scare thankfully this time either, another obstacle we did away with.

Found Mr Taxi man without much problem.

We got into the taxi at ten to seven.

We arrived home THREE hours later. A journey that would normally take an hour multiplied threefold thanks to the tube strike in London. Apparently only three lines were operating out of the twelve and so masses thronged the city to walk, drive or catch a bus into work. Traffic was horrendous.

This strike is reported to last until Thursday evening and it should get back to normal by Friday. Thankfully I walk and do not rely on tubes to get into work.

Got home at about 9.50am and managed to get into work by half ten. I merely showered and didn’t even have time to unpack; this morning my clothes are still staring at me from the suitcase. O how I loathe unpacking.

My short but sweet holiday was good. But I have decided that holidays [anything greater than 5 days] are much too stressful for me. I stress trying to meet deadlines prior to leaving and when I come back, I stress over the obscene amount of work I am expected to get done. Everything is urgent and needed by ‘yesterday’.

Flying for 13 hours, having inadequate sleep, being stuck in traffic for another 3 hours, feeling jet lagged, trying to clear out 100 odd emails while doing work is an absolute NIGHTMARE. I had to have Coke to keep me going throughout. I called it a day by 6-ish, pile of workload notwithstanding. I knew I had to leave when the numbers started to look fuzzy and I could barely keep my eyes open.

And so I survived Day 1. Let’s see how I handle Day 2 as I have been awake since 4.30am.

Welcome back the Wharfer.