This could have been the most boring day spent in an airport yet, beating the 10 hours in Sheremetevo 10 years ago with nothing but one bar of chocolate to break the boredom. I rationed myself to one block every hour and was thankful I had a seat.
Today it was just bad management. I could only change my flight to the evening Gatwick flight. I had nowhere to leave my luggage in Kiev, at least without paying 50 Euros to extend the privilege. So I went to the airport at the same time as one of my colleagues, arriving at one for an eight o'clock flight.
It's very loud in the loung with flight announcements all the time, in three languages and for each partner on the flight. The coffee bar, snack place was pretty unappetising. Somehow I slogged it out all day with my two books, Orman Pamuk's White Castle and a book on the history of glass. Mostly I dozed as I had had a rough night what with the heat, the mosquitos and a very dusty flat.
However when the flight was announced as delayed due to non-arrival of the airport I was pretty pissed off. My ipod battery was flat and my phone not much better. No games installed yet on my new computer.
But they checked us in and the flight is only an hour late. I remembered that there were power points upstairs so I did a surreptitious charge of my phone and ipod for half an hour and felt much better. Can't say the same about the chicken baguette from the irish bar, which is the only place for food and drink on the airside. Disgusting pieces of reconstituted chicken in soggy rolls.
Then I remembered there was supposed to be wifi, and amazingly there was. A free public one which lets me write this, and a more secure one which no doubt you have to pay for.
So now I can read the blogs I haven't had time to read all this week.
Small note from a day's watching of adverts in the waiting lounge: this is the first time I have ever seen an advert promoting better childcare. A very sad little girl clutching her teddy has been parked in a corner, while her mother talks incessantly on her mobile and the father is in an armchair in front of the telly with a bottle. The end of the advert says something like "play with your children". Rather a sad anecdote about Ukrainian family life.
And now to find out about Tymoshenko. The word is that our minister (Fuel and Power) has been dismissed and sent to manage Odessa municipality where he apparently comes from. Another case of "spending more time with my family". No word yet on who Tymoshenko has replaced him by, but he was always going to be the scapegoat for the gas deal last winter with Russia.
