6-7/09/25 The Long Night

We left Perth in darkness, the necklace of lights along the beach front giving way to an unseen ocean under a shining full moon. At cruising altitude frost traced delicate silver patterns over the outside windows as the night stretched with us to cover the full 17 hour trip.

It's a long way.

Roger and I were in separate seats at opposite ends of a chock-a-block 787 Dreamliner. I was surrounded by groups of travellers chatting happily and jealously eyeing the curtains that separated us from the fairytale realms of business class.  My seat buddies and I explored the intricacies of human-rights law and underwater robotic military operations over our cardboard dinners, and then settled into our respective movies.  As the night wore on our teamwork around bladder needs was reminiscent of the three musketeers: when went one went all, thereby minimising the tedious process of everyone having to get up and move when one person needed to use the loo.

Back in the trenches of Economy, Roger was surrounded by tired little children and impressively organised adults.  "We thought of doing two flights with a layover," said one of the parents. "But that would be awful!  Oh my goodness, getting on and off planes and everyone sleeping terribly in a hotel and then doing it all again the next day.  We decided to just have 17 hours of pain and then it's all over."  Which made sense in a masochistic kind of way.

I watched a pretty London sunrise as we waited for our hotel bus, having paid for a night that we didn't use purely for the convenience of arriving at 7am and having a room to go to.  

Good Morning London.

By lunchtime sitting still was dangerously conducive to sleeping so I went for a walk up to the Cranford House stables along the River Crane, where unknown birds twittered happily in the bushes.

The UK was, so far, very leafy.

Cranford Park was the hunting lodge/residence of the Berkeley family who were/are big knobs in English aristocracy.  The Berkeley Hunt was/is the oldest hunt pack in the country, hence the need for big stables to house the hunting horses.  The Berkeleys moved out of the house in 1918 and sold it in 1932, taking themselves off to live in their castle in Gloucester, poor things.

Cranford Stables now contains bats rather than horses.  The bats are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981), and enjoy a peaceful life at Cranford Stables.

Right beside Cranford Park lay St Dunstan's church, where the paths were paved with old headstones.  The graveyard (and the church) was still in use however due to limitations of space the newer residents were relegated to headstones on the surrounding walls, which begged the question of where their physical remains were. On second thoughts, I didn't really want to know the answer to that question.

Resting places.

Back at the hotel, practical matters demanded attention.  London's railway workers, bless their little high-vis vests, chose this week to go on strike. We spent an inordinate amount of time trying to force our tired brains to solve complex transport problems so that on Tuesday we could get from our hotel to the St Pancras International train station to catch a train to Belgium.

In the end it all got too hard to think about. We got cross with each other, gave up, had a cup of tea,  and finally went to bed early because despite our previous 17-hour night we were both very tired.

To finish, the Berkeley Coat of Arms in the grounds of St Dunstan's Church.