One eye opening slowly......

Why is Day 2 always tougher than Day 1? Yesterday, I was tired but alive. Today, well, it is not so clear-cut.....

So, no energy to upload and sort all the photos, and no coherent brain-power to round up all the good bits and write up the happenings. All that is coming to the top is the marginally gruelling return journey, involving the saga of Fluffy Bunny and Nice Guy. Yup, you got it - three weeks of possibly the best holiday ever, and all she can do is rant.

Our flight from San Francisco was scheduled to leave early afternoon, with a three hour (yes, really) check in. We got there on the dot. To find that there had been a medical emergency on the inbound flight involving an unscheduled stop in Canada, and we were pushed back five hours. So, OK, these things happen and they had rearranged our connecting flight from Paris to Manchester plus giving us the grand sum of $20 to spend on food (we bought Margaritas....). The airport seating was not comfortable, but we were in a quiet corner and had knitting. These we could survive.

Got on board, no more hold-ups, made our take-off slot. We were still climbing, when the young woman in the seat in front of me pressed her button and fully reclined her seat right on to me and my knitting without so much as a by your leave. I was not 'appy.

Now, I do rather pride myself on being a fairly tolerant kind of a character, always attempting to see the other chap's point of view. But there are a handful of things that I am adamant that I will not budge on - non-selective education, the NHS (and the immorality of the drug companies), stuff like that. Plus that it is a heinous crime to recline your seat more than the merest smidge on an airplane. It traps the person behind in a coffin, and if you hate it being done to you, there is no escape by you doing it in your turn to the next in line - just ain't fair. This is my viewpoint, and from it I do not waver.

Come dinner time, and there was not room for me to fit my tray in, so I got the flight attendant to get Fluffy Bunny (so called because she had on a garment involving a heck of a lot of artificial fur around the neck and had a kind of "gee, I'm so cute" air about her)to put her seat up, which she did with one hell of a bad grace, slamming it back the instant the trays were taken away. The DSM and I went for a wander after that, and he offered to swap seats with me - and I can't remember the exact sequence of events, but it ended up with them swapping seats so I had Nice Guy in front of me, on the inside seats. This lasted for all of ten minutes, at which point he rears up and around and says "ma'am? Ma'am? (I love the way young Americans are so polite when they are totally dissing you!) Ma'am, I'm trying to be like nice to you, but I can't sit like this, I'm going to have to let my seat back.)

Nice to me??? Patronising little git, what about being considerate??

There then followed a considerable amount of discourse, in which, believe it or not, I kept my cool remarkably well. This involved them telling me that as the seats could recline, then they were free to do so, which is of course perfectly true and I acknowledged in my turn. I was pretty incensed when Nice Guy then asked me how I expected him to manage with so little room, it was inhumane, so I pointed out to him that he was expecting me to survive thus, to which his riposte was that I should exercise my choice as they were doing, and I in my turn retorted that a) it was against my personal moral code and b) the people behind us had the bulkhead just behind them and so could not escape me......

I decided not to ask them to compromise by only partially reclining.....they had the right to do as they pleased.

Believe it or not, I did manage to doze a little (Nice Guy managed considerably more, and snored loudly for at least an hour). Eventually, the DSM and I did exchange seats so that I was on the aisle and could get up whenever I liked. The most galling thing was that for at least two hours during the flight, Nice Guy was out of his seat and standing.....grrrr.

So, Ms Fluffy Bunny and Mr Nice Guy on the Air France flight from SFO to CDG on 10 November - a pox on you! Or the murrain, or something. Quite apart from anything else, you prevented me from getting on with sock two of the Regia pair, and that's a crime. (I finished the first at SOAR, did the first of the Jacob ones, and nearly finished the second - not too dusty.)

The onward flight from Manchester was all right except for the last twenty minutes of descent when we were flying through some lovely Manchester weather and got tossed around like cooking popcorn, practically everyone (not many) on board turning delicately green.

But, hey, we are home now, have unpacked, drooled over all the lovely fibre and spindles and I have made a start on the washing. In the next few days, I hope to organise the photos, and write up the real stuff. Then I can really bore you........