Back in Blighty

It’s over six years since I was last in the UK. When I arrived yesterday I felt a distinct weirdness, but I’m already over that. In fact right this minute I feel better than I have in weeks if not months.

I thoroughly recommend Emirates. All four legs of my journey were extremely pleasant. The staff were friendly and the food was the best I’ve ever experienced on a long-haul flight. Admittedly I got lucky by having at least one empty seat next to me, and sometimes two, all the way from Sydney. Emirates run a ten-abreast configuration on their 777s, as many airlines unfortunately do these days, and you can really use an empty seat or two there. The airline is a colossus and its mega-hub, Dubai, is heaving with A380s. Emirates fly nearly half of all the four-engined double-decker behemoths in existence. We spent a bit longer than we bargained for in Dubai as all planes were grounded for over an hour thanks to a rogue drone.

I watched some films on the plane but nothing remotely blockbustery (I’m fed up with that). I saw The Man Who Knew Infinity, the story of the great mathematician Ramanujan and his mentor Hardy who was played by Jeremy Irons. Given that it was set in Cambridge and I noticed that both my flight number and row number were prime before I got on the plane, this was an unsurprising choice of movie for me. I then saw Eddie The Eagle, the story of the British ski jumper from my youth, Where to Invade Next?, the Michael Moore film that suddenly made me want to visit Slovenia, and a weird animated film called Anomalisa.

Although everything went without a hitch, apart from the drone, flying half-way around the world without a stopover is always an ordeal. And even at Heathrow, 32 hours after I left Christchurch, there was plenty of travelling yet to endure. I was carrying 35 kilos of luggage. At least I beat the rush hour in London. I’d forgotten just how far it is on the Piccadilly Line from Heathrow: almost an hour. I then scrambled onto the non-stop train to Cambridge and took the new guided bus to St Ives (it actually sprang into action in 2011 not long after I was last here, but it’s new to me). I hit rush hour in Cambridge and I must have been a right pain in the butt on that bus with my bags. It was almost 6pm when I arrived at my parents’ apartment. I got a takeaway curry in town and at 8:30 I was out like a light. I slept for ten hours.

St Ives has changed surprisingly little. There wasn’t a Polski Sklep last time I was here, and Tom’s Cakes would appear to be healthier than the smoke-filled windowless betting shop I remember. But many of the businesses I remember from 2010, and even as a kid, are still running. And the river, the bridge, the meadow, the things that make St Ives what it is, have hardly changed at all.

My aunt popped in this morning but I missed her. She brought me some food and a copy of the Daily Mail, of which I can only bring myself to read selected bits. I was out FaceTiming my parents from the library and trying to recover the money from my frozen Barclays account.

On Saturday I’ll be going to London to catch up with a friend from university. There was a piece on the news about people born in the eighties being only half as wealthy as those born in the seventies. I was born in ’80, he in ’79. He qualified as an actuary ten years ago and has done very well for himself. He has quite an amazing mind and has always worked hard. I wouldn’t mind being half as wealthy as him.

Why on earth am I doing this? That’s what I thought on Tuesday just before boarding the plane. Even getting to that point was quite a challenge for me. Now I get the feeling that it might, just might, all be worth it.