This isn’t a trick question, what would you pay for £50,000,000? After all that is the amount that was recently stolen in the UK and is now apparently up for auction on Ebay
This at least answers the question how the criminals were planning to dispose of the money, I suppose the other £3,000,000 that was stolen is being used for postage after all how else could postage only be £2.50?
It was time to head back to Germany today and I know I left my razor and other toiletries at my dad’s house, but it looks like that wasn’t quite enough to appease the gods of travel and unlike coming over where time was tight and getting lucky by being early, today was slightly different…
I left with what I thought would be plenty of time to catch my plane but I was wrong. I was driven to the train station only to find that the trains were delayed (something that never seems to happen in Germany – bloody British Rail! Even if they don’t exist anymore) thank to an idiot driving into a bridge further up the line. Also I had just missed one train by a couple of minutes and so I had to wait for the next train which if it had been on time would have been perfect, but as already noted – it wasn’t…
So I wait for the train and it arrives and I am behind schedule, but not too badly I’ll arrive in the second half of check in, but that’s ok.
I arrive at Temple Meads in Bristol and it’s time to get a bus to the Airport and I head to the bus parked up at the bus stop and am about to board when I am told, “I’m going to the bus station, mate. The one for the airport left about 2 minutes ago.”
Shit!
So it’s now twenty to five and I have to be at the airport by five thirty, the next bus is due at five and it’s the best time of day to drive through Bristol if you want to go nowhere fast…
Five o’clock comes, but the bus doesn’t…
Just before ten past five the bus shows and I ask the driver how long it’s currently taking to get to the airport and he comments “twenty minutes, but you know what buses are like…” I figure that if he’s right that gives me five minutes to spare when I get to the airport to find the check in desk and check in and decide, “What the hell! Lets try for it.”
I got on the bus and I was clock watching the entire journey and as the clock read 17:32 we pulled up at the bus stop outside the airport
and thankfully as he had allowed me to get on the coach with my luggage instead of putting it in the luggage area under the coach I am waiting to start running from the coach as he opens the door after he informed me the Easy Jet check in desk was the far end of the airport*
I haven’t moved so fast since someone pissed me off and I wanted to catch them and rip them apart and I sprinted to the desk to check in before it closed, leaving me stuck in Britain for at least 24 hours.
Then it was pass through the security checks to be stopped as my bag looked suspicious through the x-ray and I thing the bloke must have been German as when he informed me that I had the ingredients for a bomb in my bag and when I replied commenting that in my experience of chemistry I had never heard of lemon curd being an ingredient for bomb making he decided to go all science on me.
After all that rushing for the plane it decided to snow as we went to take off and as a result we got delayed an hour, although on the plus side I had the same lady sat next to me on the way back as on the way over and as she was tired I spent most of the flight entertaining her kid who wasn’t tired, but was definitely bored by sitting in a plane for so long as so I pulled faces, performed magic, did origami and used my newly shaven head as a racetrack all in the name of entertainment for the kid and I suspect a few of the other passengers.
*Thankfully Bristol International Airport is quite small!
My hair hasn’t been cut since my last visit to Britain and it’s beginning to become slightly reminiscent of an afro and despite the comments from my step mum of how it’s unfair I have a hairstyle she has to pay to get – I am tired of looking like I have a perm.I have considered telling the student that I went to a German hairdressers and asked for ‘a little off the top’ and was left with a little on top instead, but I think I‘ll stick with the ‘losing a fight to a lawnmower’ explanation.
In the beginning was a full head of hair…
Talk about a centre parting - No turning back now!
I now have more hair on my chin than on my head.
It’s amazing how quick news travels, I find myself back in the UK and I find myself lined up for a bit of photography and although I only had one model instead of the expected two I did what I do so well and took a few photos.
Here a few more photos that are to be added to my front room studio collection…
To see the rest of the collection have a look in the galleries.
One thing I miss about England are special offers and it was only upon going into a supermarket that I realized that I hadn’t seen a BOGOF offer in months – Germany seems to be quite content with nothing more than the odd lowered price.
I was in the mood for a sugar fix and so I headed towards the ‘Aisle of Delight and General Sugary Goodness’ to see what was on offer to sate my sweet tooth and looking for the special offers I quickly noticed that Jaffa Cakes were 2 packs for 99p and as a special bonus somewhen in the past 6 months Jaffa Cakes had become available in new varieties – blackcurrant and lemon and lime flavours.
With such an offer and two new varieties to try the decision wasn’t too hard on what to purchase and so clutching a couple of packs I headed to the tills, as ever though there was a catch, I was in Scummerfield!
Scummerfield are bastards, like most supermarkets they have a customer card to track what you buy, but unlike most supermarkets to receive their special offers it is mandatory to have a card to take advantage of them and guess what I didn’t have?
That’s right what would have been the nice price of 99p transformed into the sum of £1.42 and some of the sweetness of the no longer bargain Jaffa Cakes was lost. What makes it worse is when I got home my brother informed me that I should have been offered a card at the checkout so that I could take advantage of the offer so I curse the shoddy till staff that I had serve me, things have certainly slipped since I was a till tart!
So after the high life in Germany I am definitely seeing what people mean by ‘Rip-Off’ Britain
Today marks the beginning of almost a week off and my first visit to the UK in 5 months, because of me previously choosing a New Year in Berlin in preference to a Christmas at home. Also I am beginning to get the hang of this travelling lark and for the most part the journey home was pretty pleasant.
That said it was also fairly stressful as I knew I could get back from Bristol easily, after all I was catching the London train and there are plenty of those to choose from - or so I thought! Yesterday corrected that assumption as I checked the train times online to give people my approximate arrival time back home and discovered that the last train I could take left at 22:40, this gave me a travel itinerary of:
Leave Hamburg: 21:15
Arrive Bristol Airport: 22:00
Leave Bristol Airport: 22:20
Arrive Bristol Temple Meads: 22:40
Leave Bristol Temple Meads: 22:40
In short any delay would leave me waiting until 05:30 the following morning with nowhere to stay overnight, although as I was aware a problem might occur I did pack my sleeping bag with me so if I had to wait in the cold I was ready for it! I still remember spending the night waiting for a train at Berlin Zoo after missing the last train by 2 minutes and I didn’t fancy repeating that one as that was when the weather was warmer and it still wasn’t that much fun at 4 in the morning as it does get cold if you are just sat around.
So when I got on the plane I made sure to ask about whether we were running on time or not and I was informed that we were not running to schedule and so were not expected to arrive at 22:00 as planned…
It was a bit darker for my flight…
…Instead we were running 30 minutes early as for some reason or other we were ahead of schedule and the wind was behind us.
Naturally this was a little bit of a relief for me, as now barring some major cock up I was going to get home on time and so I sat back and relaxed flipping through the inflight magazine wondering who on earth would buy a Crazy Frog toy inflight and when I asked the flight attendants this as they offered me the chance to buy one (an offer I naturally declined) I unsurprisingly was informed that it was their best seller - I feel this speaks volumes about Easy Jet customers…
But it’s good to be back and I am looking forward to the next few days of finding out what I have missed going on in my absence.