Airport security rules continue to confound me. Every other country I have visited has removed common cosmetics such as lipstick and mascara from their “dangerous terrorist weapons” list. Not so Australia. And yet their screening guys do not require you to remove shoes or even coats. Go figure.

The trip back to the UK was not nearly as convenient as the one going out, sleep-wise. After a domestic transfer from Melbourne we left Sydney at 5:00pm. That’s too early for sleep. We arrived in Bangkok at 2:00am, Sydney time, by which time I had got a few hours of sleep, and then had to be woken up to get off the plane. Sleeping on take-off was so easy I actually missed the food service (which was a Thai fish curry), but somewhere over Pakistan it became morning in Sydney and I was wide awake, even though it was midnight in London. That was BAD. Thankfully I have managed to sleep a bit more on the rest of the journey.

Bangkok is a weird experience. They encourage you to get off the plane while it is cleaned, but also encourage you to leave all of your cabin baggage behind due to delays at security. I guess if any of the cleaners tried to open one of the overhead bins it would be very obvious to the cabin crew. Anyway, all of my stuff was still there when I got back.

And now I am in London. There is a Tube strike on today, but thankfully I don’t need that service. I booked a midday train from Paddington, giving myself plenty of time for the flight to be late, but now have several hours to kill. As the toilets are Paddington are not accessible to people with luggage I’m staying at Heathrow. Starbucks has its uses.

QANTAS had Watchmen showing on their (very excellent) on demand movie service. Given what I have heard about movies cut for aircraft, I was rather surprised to see that most of the sex and graphic violence had been left in. Unfortunately the screen is much to small to allow you to look for interesting things in the background. That will have to wait for the DVD.

I also re-watched the music documentary, “The Roxy Music Story”. This reminds me that that the new album, which the boys were working on back in 2006/7, is still not out. Anyone know what has happened to this? Also has anyone else noticed that Eno is now the best-looking of the lot of them? Funny how age works, isn’t it.