Safe and alive
To tell you the truth - no matter how stupid this might sound to add to an already existent fear - I was especially scared of flying back from holiday on a significant date like 1-1-11, but thanks to the efforts of San Francisco Airport, that was something I didn't really have to worry about. Though I had attempted not to get up properly until 10am to prepare myself for six hours of flying from 9 o'clock and only sleeping once home, the flight was delayed for two hours and I spent the whole thing from 11pm in a sort of drunken half-awake stupor. Apparently when the snacks were handed round I had sat bolt upright, said "Terra Blues" and fallen straight back asleep again, and I did find a packet of them in front of me when I opened my eyes but have no memory of them being put there.
After a flight through darkness, we came down quickly into very thick fog - I had thought that we were going through another layer of clouds, and then the runway suddenly appeared underneath us. Fuelled by the euphoric promise of not being on a plane, I tried to congratulate the pilot on managing the landing so well, but having been semi-conscious for the last few hours, it came out as "Clouds, oh, the fog - yes, runway". And after fighting our way through the crowds trying to take off from Boston - most of whom have now been there for four or five days - we took a taxi through the sort of winter slush-land that remains of the huge snowfall that happened here last week, and found our house still standing, the path nicely shovelled and everything.
GOODBYE I'M GOING TO BED