Small victories.

 What a journey. We're up at first light for a walk round town. 

After the last few days chill winds the local pigeons have found a sheltered spot of tarmac and are enjoying the warmth of the morning sunshine.

The cinnamon rolls in Starbucks Japan are infinitely better than those in Europe.

It takes exactly 57 minutes to check out of our hotel, take a taxi to the airport, go through passports and security and arrive in the peace and quiet of the airport lounge. It would have been quicker but the man at the front desk of the hotel acted with open jawed surprise when we asked to settle up. It was as if 'checking out' was a rare and unusual request.

BA has a limited choice of flights to Asia. These war rerouted days the Tokyo flight is so long it has to carry a replacement flight crew for the last half of the journey. If the weather is bad and the list of diversion airports is limited this grows to three sets of pilots and co-pilots. If we assume a pilot is paid £200k a year then the cost of having all these crews on a flight, plus board and lodging, soon mounts up. Safety regulations mean that all the flight crews have to spend two nights in a hotel before returning. A rough calculation means that's pretty much £20k additional overhead per flight. It's much more profitable for BA and other European airlines to operate flights to the US or the Gulf where you don't have these additional embedded costs. The additional flight crews sleep in a windowless little cupboard on the right behind the cockpit. The cabin crew have their own space at the back.

Too late to catch the evening connector so we spend the night at the Sofitel at Heathrow. The hotels restaurants are full so dinner consists of BLT's in Costa Coffee. These are washed down with Pinot Grigio from a can. We know it's Pinot Grigio because it says so on the label. In a blind tasting you'd be hard pushed to know whether it's wine or soda. Such is the romance of travel. 

We expect to sleep solidly through to seven o'clock but the jet lag demon has us up and about at three thirty. Why is it that flying East is always harder ? We change our connecting flight  booking from the ten o'clock to the six fifteen. This leaves on time and takes excatly 39 minutes from London to Edinburgh. To say this is super quick would be an understatement. We are the first passengers into the London lounge ( or customers as the airline now refers to travelers ) and we're still the only guests  when we leave. The layout and furnishing of airport lounges is a subject worthy of a book. The Indian gentleman who welcomes us is an accountant in a shipping company. He's putting his three daughters through university and works five hours a day at the airport lounge as a second job to 'help a little with the cash flow'. The eldest daughter is specializing in breast cancer research at Manchester. He shows us their photographs with a joy and pride that you could cut with a knife. Look around and life is full of folks celebrating small ... or not so small ... victories.