When I was doing crazy hours as a systems engineer for Nortel, I had a rule of thumb that anything over four hours sleep was worth having. Less than that and you felt worse than having no sleep at all.
Anyway, up at 3.30 this morning after a semi-sleepless night, maybe two hours. I was rolling like a drunk as I made my way to the bathroom. I sympathise, to a point, with Clare's last minute approach to life - leave as late as possible, no hanging around, but we had no energy to argue and we arrived at Bristol airport, or at least the off-airport parking, two hours before departure time.
So now we have the tyranny of small delays: queues at parking reception, queues at check-in, the baggage conveyor belt was broken so more queues at another gate. Factor in a cup of coffee and interminable queues at security and at the gate and all that apparently bloated time-budget was used up.
I write this at 27,000 feet over Germany. We have a ninety minute coach transfer to our hotel on arrival but it's thirty degree sunshine in Split, apparently.
I just saw this plane about a mile away on a parallel course. I refrained from alerting the pilot ...
