Mike's musings

Off to Helsinki (Sennon!)

(backposting) Jo was pleased today, because she was going to see her friend Sennon again. Victoria had kindly offered to look after Jo for a few hours due to a difficult set of circumstances:

• Carolyn, Jo's nanny, had a hospital appointment in the afternoon
• Moo had a meeting in London
• the latest flight I could find to Helsinki that would get my to my morning meeting tomorrow was 1955.

A little overkill, but given the stories we've been hearing about airports (more Heathrow, to be honest), I thought I'd try to give myself 4 hours or so to get through Stansted, which was bound to be heaving.

I had Jo from 1230 or so, which was tricky, as a number of calls came in, but I managed it all. Over lunchtime, I took her for a walk, and we popped in to see Claudia and Stella. They're both well, and harvest proceeding to plan, if a little slowly (given the weird weather we've been having).

So I dropped Jo off at Victoria's, and was off by around 1537 (what a relief, given how hard it was to get Jo sorted and in the car). Got to Stansted at 1605 for a 1955 flight. And it was pretty quiet. I spent half and hour taking calls, managed to check in early at a deserted checkin, and took almost exactly 8 minutes to go through security. Yes, 8 minutes. 4 hours really _was_ overkill. Still, did some duty-free shopping - finally bought myself an mp3/ogg player (Samsung YP-U2, 1GB), got a shirt from Austin Reid (non-iron: they're brilliant for business trips), some aftershave and a bottle of Caol Ila 12 year old (bliss!) - had some food, and basically took things nice and easy.

Got to Helsinki around 0050 local. Bed by 0130/0200 or so.