back in a freezing cold coventry

i'm back in coventry and the first thing one always notices on the plane is that there seems to be a massive amount of clouds over the UK when everywhere else is pretty clear... hmmm... so when the plane broke through the clouds, a glorious blanket of white was covering all the farmland and birmingham airport was pretty white and grey.

have i mentioned that my flight to dubai was TERRIBLE? it was a)full and b)full of screaming babies. is it just me, or is the few days after christmas a season of mass migration of babies across continents? or perhaps parents decide to take their babies on holiday? so the babies were screaming when the plane was taxi-ing (note that the plane had YET to take off), during take-off (understandable) and throughout the flight (taking turns to scream their heads off) - you've got to hand it to those babies though... i think that if i screamed as long as they did, i'd have a sore throat for 2 weeks... but to console myself, i was on a half-full/empty plane from dubai to birmingham so i managed to move to a row (2 seats side) all to myself - which isnt that impressive considering there were a few people that had 4 seats to themselves but still... moral of the story? always be thick-skinned. i moved after the plane had taken off (because people were arriving onto the plane in batches depending on the bus that brought people from the terminal to the planes) and i didnt want to sit in a seat which was for other people. what i should have done was what some other passengers did which was to ask the stewardess carrying the list which row was empty... sigh...

anyway, it was freezing in my house because i had switched the main to low over the holidays to cut the gas bill and it took an enitre day to heat the house to liveable temperatures. i think the whole tropical-temperate thing really shocked my system because i'm usually very resilient to cold temperatures but it was crazy when i went out today to town. it was "-1 but feels like -6" on the uk.weather.com forecast and my fingers were freezing because i didnt bring my gloves out. how silly. and i hardly bought anything because all the stores i wanted to get stuff from were either closed (like my favourite book store in cov market) or in a state of chaos (from crazy boxing-day-sale people).

have i mentioned i have a cold? i took some flu medication which is working wonders clearing my nose but now i've got a sore throat so off i go to Boots tomorrow to get cough syrup. yum.