Mrs B finds a blogging voice and our friend Al finds a new husband.

This week a big hand for Mrs B who is a much anticipated guessed blogger….

Observations of a novice business traveller

Firsts:

First time Mr B and I have spent more than 3 days/nights apart in over 28 years
(bizarrely, after I finished celebrating, I found I actually missed him….)

First overseas business trip

First (official) business class flight

So, I find myself travelling overseas on business for the first time in my career. Only waited 26 years………..but despite my outward appearance of self assurance and mature confidence, inside I was wracked by feelings of nervousness and apprehension.

And the worst thing was………even after being with someone for 25 years, I still didn’t want to experience all this without my soulmate. After all, we’ve been together longer than we’ve been apart and done all of our travelling together.

Anyway, back to the neuroses:

• What do I pack for a trip that includes formal business meetings, casual business meetings, dinners (both business and pleasure), leisure and tourism? The answer appears to be “almost everything in my wardrobe”

• Just how do men travel with hand-luggage only? (obviously that excludes my husband because he brings The Beast, who has more changes of clothes (or in this case lenses) than an average Kylie live show).

• What should I wear to travel business class?

• Is there a separate check-in desk at Terminal 5 or have I just shown myself up as a complete novice by checking in with all the plebs?

• Where the heck is the lounge I can use?

• Is this food and drink really free?

• Can I take the magazines and newspapers with me?

• Why isn’t Mr B here to enjoy this with me?

Who’d have thought that a 44 year old woman would have so many issues?

Anyway, I eventually found the BA business class lounge and enjoyed the following freebies:

Chicken korma and rice
Tea and several packets of biscuits
Large gin and bitter lemon (in the absence of full fat tonic)
Packet of crisps
The FT, Hello and World of Interiors

Monday (Day 1) The flight:

At the boarding gate, like a plonker, I queued up with everyone because they said they were boarding seats 30 – 70 (I was in 61A). It took me a while to realise that surely there was some kind of benefit from being a business class traveller? Oh, yes, you get to jump to the front of the queue and experience the magic world that is “priority boarding”.

So, I’m boarding and get directed “upstairs”………shurely shum mistake? Isn’t it 1st class in the bubble? Apparently not. On BA flight 27 to Hong Kong, business class passengers are in the bubble. And very nice it is too. My neighbour is Damien, a very nice but talkative Irishman who insisted on leaving the privacy screen down……grhhh!

Damien is a well travelled business man off to Macau for a pallet supplier convention (and I thought my job was boring………!) Actually, he was alright. Between us we pretended we didn’t have a clue how to operate the flat bed or the in-flight entertainment system (well, he pretended, I genuinely didn’t have a clue!).

I kept myself company by watching Sex and the City 2 and part of The History Boys.
(Mr B was particularly unimpressed as he said he would expect to get through at least 5 films on a 12 hour flight).

That’s probably enough chatter for now, it’s all still a bit new to me stepping out of my editor role,….next time I’ll take you through the Hong Kong part of the trip….

A Record of the week

Airport – by the Motors
Fly away – by Aerosmiths
Get me to the Church on Time – by Nat King Cole (You will have to delve down into the pictures for this reference….)

Photo finish
This week’s photo finish is dedicated to Al & Richard who got married on Sunday - well I think they did.....

It could have gone better - we had made a mad dash back from Wales (Ooops , I haven’t actually got around to telling you about that trip, since Mrs B hijacked this week’s BlackLOG. You will have to wait until next week for that) and arrived dead on 5:30pm.

I was quite impressed as I had been fighting a rearguard action against both the traffic and Mrs B (who would surface from a deep sleep, announce I was travelling too fast before slipping back into unconsciousness....Nothing to do with me breaking really hard and knocking her out on the windscreen, honest). So you can imagine how shocked I was to see the Bride and Groom exiting from the church.

Were they having a dry run to make sure they got it right for us….?

Errr, no …

We had got the time wrong (again.....At least we did better by 23 hours and 30 minutes from the last time disaster The almost Perfect gig experience, so I think you will agree that is a big improvement) and arrived at the time that the Wedding Breakfast had been scheduled. Worse still because the drive was over 4 hours long we had decided not to get changed until we got to the venue, so as not to ruin our wedding outfits….. so despite not making the service, we ended up in the official photographs and even got mentioned in the groom’s speech as the couple who were changing just as everyone walked out of the service….Doh!

Richard & Al we are so sorry that we missed the main event and I hope some of the informal photo’s I took at the reception will go some way towards our redemption....

Mrs B and a freshly married Al

While it is acceptable for the bride to be fashionably late

the same tradition does not apparently apply to the guests.

How unfair it that ….

If only we had known that we had got the wrong time we could have sent

Al some pre wedding chocolates, around half an hours worth and we

would probably have got away with it …….

Princess Al of Great Chesterfield holding court.

Richard if I can give you two bits of advice to keep

Al Happy – lots of Chocolate and Chick flicks will

do The trick......

A big thank you to Richard, the Groom , for taking the

opportunity to mention us in the Speech – just in case

anyone had failed to notice us arriving late and trying to

get changed just as everyone came out of the church....

Lisa spots The Beast . So not the natural pose I was

Looking for…. Still if she had not been looking it would

 have been just a shot of the back of peoples heads.

Now this was a first for me, sitting next to someone at a

wedding and finding out that he was the bride’s ex-husband.

It got me thinking would I have Mrs B at my next wedding…..

The answer is of course an emphatic yes, because if I

ever get married again it will be to Mrs B …….

I’m afraid the Blogs are stacking up like planes over Heathrow, waiting for the Queen to pop out to the shops so they can get a sneaky landing in…. To prevent each publication becoming a War & Peace I’m now having to create a blogging publishing schedule. (I can see we are going to have to stop doing so much….)


Next week will cover our trip to Wales and my Leadership course in the Lake District.  Both of which happened last week. While Mrs. B’s continuing adventures in Hong Kong and China, which happened two weeks ago, will be the following week (as long as you guys give her some deserved encouragement)  and will act as coverage while we cycle through Cuba…..

The Cuba Blog is currently booked in for the New Year
(Please note this is all subject to change, as this is BlackLOG and not a democracy....)

Confused….You will be……

See some of you here next week and if you find that you are struggling to keep up don't forget to bring a pen and paper to take notes.....