Day 14: Kolkata to London to Edinburgh to Queensferry... sigh...

The wake-up call was 4am, followed by a waiter with a pot of tea - Darjeeling of course. He brought the tray in, I tipped him and waited for him to leave. "Please, let me pour," he said. "No thank you, that's fine." "Please, madam, allow me the privilege." Good grief! I just wanted to let the tea draw.

We were away too early for breakfast, so the hotel made us up boxes, with a sandwich, juice, crisps and so on and we ate that at the airport. Amazingly I had a row of three seats to myself again! Very comfortable. And the flight was fun too because it was daytime and I had superb views of somewhere hot and dry - possibly Afghanistan.






And I had visits from Merle, Desi, Susan, Lynda and Denis, and visited them ... the most sociable flight I've been on in a long time.

At Heathrow I was really pleased I left so long between flights - it took an age to get to T5; it wasn't just a train trip, I had to change trains! And the security routine was quite something. The thing I hated about the terminal though was the shops - it was all designer and swank and swish, but hardly anywhere to get a coffee. The few cafes had giant queues. My advice is to open a couple of traditional tea shops, with lovely big pots of tea, plates of cakes and proper sandwiches. Crazy idea.

Finally, at last I got on the plane for Edinburgh, with a chatty, witty chap sitting next to me who made me feel glad to be going back to lovely Scotland.