Friday 18^th April

I’m up bright and early cos I went to bed last night without packing – sometimes I just can’t face it, but I manage to cram everything in and I’m even a few minutes early down in reception waiting for the taxi.

The taxi driver is a mad but great woman who speaks a tad more English than I speak Russian, but we manage to hold a fantastic conversation about everything and nothing the whole way to the airport.  We do actually talk about the traffic, the roadworks, Yuri Gagarin, police corrruption, football, her house, Volga cars and my journey across Russia, which is quite impressive, I think.  She tries to strangle me a few times for some reason I have yet to fathom, and teaches me not only the words, but also the gestures for telling the traffic police to eff off, so all in all, it’s a productive trip.

I manage to get a decent seat on the plane and kip sporadically between food and drink most of the way back to Heathrow.

I’d booked a hire car ON-LINE yesterday and the whole process of registering, transferring to the car park, picking a car and leaving is all so smooth.  We really must try to export our service culture out east one of these days.  Before long I’m in the car, heading for Kingston and the office to meet the troops for the first time in over 6 weeks.

I get stuck in a few roadworks but make half decent time and run into a reception committee waiting outside the office.  It’s all handshakes and hail traveller well met stuff, and quite nice to see familiar faces again after so long.  We grab a pizza then I do the rounds back in the office, have a couple of catch up meetings on the stuff I’ll be working on when I finally finish in Russia, then head off home.

The journey is good by Friday night M25 / M3 / M4 standards.  The one noticeable thing about coming home is always how green our countryside is, and this time is no exception.  The lambs are all out gambolling in the fields, one even put a tenner on us to win at the weekend.  It's a decent enough journey and I’m eventually back home eating chip shop chips and with the girls again for the 1^st time in nearly 3 weeks.