FIVE MILE HIGH CLUB

I am at 36000 feet, flying at 566 miles an hour above St. John's in Newfoundland. Even better, I have had a couple of hours kip.
This morning's journey from the Grosvenor House Hotel to Terminal 5 was an absolute dream. Clearly, Sunday morning is the time to do it!
I have the First Class compartment of the excellent Heathrow Express all to myself. reflect on the ghastly journey of yesteryear on the Piccadilly Line underground. But of course the speed and the comfort comes at a price. A return journey 'Express Class' is £32, with First a whopping £50. Great if someone else is paying!
It's my first sight of Terminal 5, which really is most impressive. Lifts glide up and down totally automatically, so the journey to check in from the train is very easy. I've been checked in on-line, so I take my bag to 'Fast Drop' and am through security at record speed and with the minimum of stress. Marvellous!
I have, in fact, saved so much time, that I pop in to have my iris scanned. In theory, when I return to the UK, I just look into a machine, it recognises me, and the door to the Promised Land, sorry Brown's Britain, will open to grant me access.
But I am so short-sighted, that I have trouble lining up my eyes with the requisite green dots. In fact, I can hardly see the wretched things. But the girl is very patient, teaches me how to open my eyes wide and make the technology work. We will see in a month whether it does!
I do not realise that a whole section of gates at the new terminal are a transit train ride away, a fact worth bearing in mind if you are travelling British Airways from Heathrow. Terminal 5 is massive.
There's time to stop off to see the new Terraces lounge, which is pretty impressive and, hurrah, now has free wifi internet access, which was not the case before BA moved.
My friend Alan managed to do my online check-in while I was in mid air on my way to London and secured my preferred seat on the jumbo's upper deck. It's the first time since I flew with the RAF from Singapore to the UK in 1971 that I have flown backwards. I am not sure I like the configuration, which has you facing a complete stranger about two feet away. Rather too close for my comfort, But after take off, a 'privacy panel' can be raised, which improves things a lot. The tranquillity of my own little eyrie is only spoiled when, during the dinner service, the Cabin Services Director suddenly lowers the screen to pass through my dinner. He assures me it's the way they do things, but his staff have served me from the front. If his way is what BA teaches staff to do, I think it's a pretty rude way of doing things.
Apart from that, the journey passes very pleasantly and I devour more papers and magazines in a nine-hour period than I generally read in a month. There's literally hundreds of on demand CD's, films, games and so on, but there all surplus to my requirements.
Afternoon tea will arrive shortly, Bangor, Maine, is off to starboard and the delights of U.S. Homeland Security awaits in a shade over three hours.