Back in Glasgow!

Well I’ve made it back in one piece. Yesterday was a very long day – with the flight from Delhi to London and then a long wait for the flight to Glasgow. It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise, but the BA flight out of London was an hour late in leaving. They are simply always late in getting out of Heathrow. I don’t know why they don’t just rewrite the schedule so that it reflects reality.

In contrast, none of my Asian flights were late. My two Thai Airways flights took off exactly on time, and all 4 flights with smaller airlines actually got off the ground about 5 minutes ahead of schedule.

The photo is of the pile of mail which was waiting for me here – and which I still haven’t had the courage to tackle. It was a fine summer evening yesterday, as you can maybe see from the sunlight shining through my mucky window – about 8:30 pm.

Emina has done a good job in looking after the flat (apart from the window cleaning), and I’m grateful for that. Later today I hope to have my car back – having left it in the hands of my pal Jim Maclean. When I spoke to him last night I was slightly concerned to hear that he and his wife Jenny had just come back from a holiday in Ireland – but he reassures me that my car wasn’t there with them. I haven’t been behind the wheel of a car all the time I have been away; so I guess it will feel a bit odd at first.

Although I am in one piece, I have a burn injury on my right calf – from taking a ride on a motorbike “taxi” in Vietnam about 10 days ago. I was wearing shorts and managed to touch the hot exhaust as I got off! I haven’t been very concerned about it because it didn’t seem particularly bad. But it has been getting a bit more painful of late and I stopped off at a pharmacy for advice earlier today. They tell me that the wound is infected and should be treated today. So I’m now in the hands of NHS24 (the round-the-clock health advice service) and I’m expecting a call-back inviting me to go down to the Western Infirmary for treatment.

I’ll probably bring this blog to an end fairly soon, unless I can come up with some new soup recipes to tell you about. It will remain in place though until the website folks decide to scrap it. Thank you to those who have tuned in from time to time and for leaving comments or for emailing me. I know that the comment facility isn’t very user-friendly. My email address is there as a link on the blog (on the "profile" page); so please feel free to use that to let me hear from you any time.

I’ve made a lot of new friends on my travels, and I look forward to staying in touch and hopefully to seeing many of you again.