Monkey break
Mrs Blog and I have had a week's break from the monkeys (aka the pirates of Pretoriuskop), as well the sunshine and warmth of Africa. We've been in England.
We decided to break the Africa trip with a week in the UK to get some research done for book five. A good mate of mine is a police protection officer (don't call him a bodyguard or he might shoot you) and, as the lead character of book five happens to be an English protection officer, a trip to interview him (aka spend five nights on the booze) was always on the cards.
Of course, coming to England in December I knew it would be cold. I'm not that stupid, but why is it that I am always completely unprepared for just how miserable it will be over here in t'old country. Landing at Heathrow at five in the morning the captain told the flight "It's quite warm on the ground at Heathrow- 15 degrees centigrade". I strained to hear the faint chuckle, or note of sarcasm, but there was neither. He was serious - going on to add, however; "it may feel a bit cooler, though, thanks to the 40 knot wind - that's 43 miles per hour".
OMG (oh, my God), as the youth of today might say.
It was cold and it just got colder and colder. However, it was a profitable week and I got to meet a bunch of very nice people from Pan Macmillan UK, who will be publishing African Sky next week. Of course, I said nothing about cricket.
As I am in the British Airways lounge right now I will attempt to post some long over due pictures. Here goes.
(Please note, legion of fans, the above mention was not a shameless plug. I am very, very dissatisfied with British Airways right now. They have decided to allow all seats to be available for early reservation online - even the highly prized emergency exit row seats. This would be OK if we knew we could get online and try and book them in advance, but we were told in Joburg that the policy was to hold back exit row seats so that check-in staff could asses whether the passenger was fit and well enough to operate the exits in an emergency or - in my case - allocate them to exceptionally tall people. One thing my online bio does not mention is that I am abnormally tall - 6'6" or pretty close to 2 metres.
Very tall.
Very cranky.
I hope I get deep vein thrombosis as a result of being cramped in my cattle class seat, and cause lots of headaches for the BA PR people. You deserve it).
We decided to break the Africa trip with a week in the UK to get some research done for book five. A good mate of mine is a police protection officer (don't call him a bodyguard or he might shoot you) and, as the lead character of book five happens to be an English protection officer, a trip to interview him (aka spend five nights on the booze) was always on the cards.
Of course, coming to England in December I knew it would be cold. I'm not that stupid, but why is it that I am always completely unprepared for just how miserable it will be over here in t'old country. Landing at Heathrow at five in the morning the captain told the flight "It's quite warm on the ground at Heathrow- 15 degrees centigrade". I strained to hear the faint chuckle, or note of sarcasm, but there was neither. He was serious - going on to add, however; "it may feel a bit cooler, though, thanks to the 40 knot wind - that's 43 miles per hour".
OMG (oh, my God), as the youth of today might say.
It was cold and it just got colder and colder. However, it was a profitable week and I got to meet a bunch of very nice people from Pan Macmillan UK, who will be publishing African Sky next week. Of course, I said nothing about cricket.
As I am in the British Airways lounge right now I will attempt to post some long over due pictures. Here goes.
(Please note, legion of fans, the above mention was not a shameless plug. I am very, very dissatisfied with British Airways right now. They have decided to allow all seats to be available for early reservation online - even the highly prized emergency exit row seats. This would be OK if we knew we could get online and try and book them in advance, but we were told in Joburg that the policy was to hold back exit row seats so that check-in staff could asses whether the passenger was fit and well enough to operate the exits in an emergency or - in my case - allocate them to exceptionally tall people. One thing my online bio does not mention is that I am abnormally tall - 6'6" or pretty close to 2 metres.
Very tall.
Very cranky.
I hope I get deep vein thrombosis as a result of being cramped in my cattle class seat, and cause lots of headaches for the BA PR people. You deserve it).
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