21 September – Arrive Home

The night time flies by – and it is wake up time – well they turn on the lights and its about 6 a.m. As per usual the breakfast is pretty rubbish, and there is definitely not enough coffee and tea… even the orange juice does not hit the spot!

Stuart walks up and a down a lot asking if anyone is on Twitter – and if so can they tweet about the flight. Everyone else is umming and ahh-ing but I decide once we land I will as it wasn't too bad a flight really, and he was good to us. Yes I do use it - although I don't normally tweet - just watch the world go by......

The landing is pretty good – but as is usual people are jumping up before we park - until reminded that they shouldn't. There is a big group beside us that have onward flight to Dublin – but they have issues as the delay in Orlando makes the transfer time a close-run thing. There are only about 12 of them so Virgin Atlantic are pulling out the stops for them.

After a long journey to the arrival gate taxi-ing at a silly speed, which always seems to be the way, the plane stops, and everyone jumps up and stand around for about 10 minutes. Then people begin to move down the aisle, and we are left fairly much on our own – apart from Stuart and the other members of the crew, While sitting there I turn on my phone – and am able to tweet for him. (About an hour or so later Virgin Atlantic tweet back thanking me.)

We sit and wait and wait until finally the staff get the aisle chair and Pat gets on. I go to door fairly well laden although halfway on the journey help is offered, only to get to the door and there is no sign of our wheelchair! It turns up after a while just about the same time as Pat appears at the door! Special assistance strikes again!

To match the journey from landing to the gate, we travel towards passport control, and it is quite a walk. As we arrive – given that it is now about 9:30 a.m. it is very busy there, the queues are very very long. At times like this having the wheelchair can be a blessing, as we are whisked to the front of the queue, with the people that were on the flight that I recognised giving us daggers!

We get through very quickly and then on up in the lift to get the luggage. Get to the carousel and within a minute or two Pat's bag is out. Quite a while later (OK maybe about 5 mins) mine turns up and before we go through customs it's wee time.

Pat goes into the disabled toilet as I don't need to go at that point – so move out of the way only to find that I appear to be a magnet for others that cause almost traffic jams around me. So, I move back a touch – Pat comes out and can't see me where I had stood. She notices me probably as I am trying to wave at her! I also then go for a wee (old man small bladder syndrome) and we head off towards customs.

I am praying that we are ok as we head through the green door (nothing to declare) – but good old Shaking Stevens comes through….. (stupid joke I know! - You are definitely not joking there - ED). Pat rings for the car, and we travel towards the short term parking.

On the way to the parking is smoking area but due to the amount of people using it I hold back while Pat sorts out the cravings. 😜 Head off through to Orange 1 (where we have to collect the car) although via the scenic route as when we enter the lift which is showing down the twats with us press the up button and the bloody lift does go up!!

Finally we go down (oh er madam – ED) and get to car which only takes a few minutes to turn up. Everything is OK although the cleaning that we had paid for is not brilliant. We are on the final part of our way home, the journey no too bad until we get the tunnel, where it becomes quite slow (no real change there). Then onto the A13 and head towards Basildon.

Soon we arrive at home – very knackered but the cat is happy that we are home. 😜 The 2016 American holiday is now over, and it won't be too long before I am back at work (and my work here is done – ED).