Insomnia

A familiar companion to us both, and more so on  the long dark nights.  (And particularly after a somewhat copious lunch...)  By the time I awoke at a rather familiar 03h30, Martyn had already given up and gone next door to read.  By that point, my North and Central American word gamers had played, so a dozen or so moves awaited, and kept me busy for a while.  Then a couple of numbers games on the iPad until the arthritic hands protested.

The lunch was good, though!  We went with friends Andy and Celia to a nearby hostelry, where I unguardedly opted for the braised shoulder of lamb.  My portion would have fed all four of us.  At about the half-way point, I remarked that if I had half the sense I was born with, I'd have stopped then.  My eyes being notoriously bigger than my belly, and having been brought up under a clean-plate regime, I finished it.  Not wise.  But we must have looked like the geriatric day out as we got out of the car: three of us have joint problems, so three of the four exits were of the pivot round and both feet on the deck before getting up variety. 

I quite like looking in on FlightRadar24 for a while in the early hours.  Over our skies, the traffic is largely of ancient freighter conversions: DHL, for example, seem to have bought up a lot of old 757s as they were retired by launch customer BA, and some are the wrong side of 30 years old.  ATPs are a favourite type with one or two freight operators: it was a last ditch attempt by BAe to wring a bit more revenue out of the old Avro 748 production line.  With new engines (and lamentably small windows compared with the original's big oval ones) it sold in small numbers, while more recent clean-sheet designs wiped the board.

It was interesting to see quite a lot of small business jets in the air in the small hours.  Cruising at prodigious altitudes - up to 47'000 feet - they cover huge distances at speeds a fair bit higher than their bigger commercial brothers.  I watched flights from Los Angeles, Lagos and Calcutta going into Luton, one from Raleigh NC into Brussels and a few into Le Bourget, and wondered what the story was behind each.  The Lagos flight had perhaps to do with the oil industry.  The Raleigh-Brussels one might have been for NATO.  Such idle speculation wasn't enough to put me back to sleep, unfortunately, so I got up when the heating came on at 06h30, and proceeded to drop off in my chair after breakfast.

Still, a bit of productivity since: a couple of loaves cooling, and a batch of tiny sausage rolls in the freezer.  The decision to bring the garage freezer out of retirement meant I had to clean it first.  Alarming experience, upon which I shall refrain from expanding.  I conclude that the people who designed the plastic interior mouldings must have had an army of slaves to do their cleaning for them.

PS:  We had a call yesterday from the manufacturers of the tumble dryer, which is subject to recall following a number of fires.  They are offering us a new one of similar spec, free of charge.  Accepted with alacrity.  Just waiting for Volkswagen AG to call me with a comparable offer.