Adventures in fancy-pancery

Today I am on my first ever business class flight... What an eye opener! If this is how the other half lives, I'm in! Just need to get an unlimited amount of money somehow hmmmm...

So lets go through it, from the beginning, the lovely Ms Joyce dropped me at the Heathrow airport and i said my goodbyes before heading inside to find where to check in, unsurprisingly, inside the terminal there are long queues for almost every check-in, having a quick look up at the board i noticed that business class check-in is D25-D28 ... Fair enough... Off i wander... There is one person in front of me in line and then I'm checking in... We’re off to a good start

After a few minutes of furiously tapping around on her keyboard the lady behind the counter tells me she is having trouble printing off my boarding pass and then like a revelation i see something in her eyes as she looks up and says “I'm so sorry sir i had mistaken you for an economy class passenger and that's why it wouldn't print”....a mistake possibly down to the fact that no one in the history of clothes has ever looked less “business” than the 6’3” skin head in a beaten up baseball cap, tatty hoody and knee length blue shorts... If she had said that she felt obliged to downgrade me i would not have been surprised! Fortunately she didn't and handed me my business class tickets and directions to my business class lounge! Oooh get me!

Business class lounge lift entrance located, i step in to said lift and one floor later stepped out into a lavishly decorated reception area manned by 3 people... None of which gave me a look to suggest i was welcome or that they believed i was anything other than lost! There was an indisputable look of surprise on the face of the man when i presented him with my ticket and gave him my biggest smile, not at all thinking to myself “yea that's right, you have to be nice to me now A-hole”

Inside the beautiful lounge was a food buffet, a coffee, tea and soft drink station to help yourself to and a fully loaded cocktail bar with a lovely man who introduced himself as Dave. Over the course of the next hour and a half Dave helped me out with 4 beautiful glasses of Sauvingon Blanc whilst i tucked into some beautiful finger food followed by some very nice curry (food I would later come to regret), i was tempted to go and utilise the shower rooms... Just because they existed... But restrained myself and instead used the free wifi to post on facebook, message some lovely people who were wishing me well and browse a bit of news.

Getting into the “business/first class queue” at the gate was fun, instead of joining 200 people queuing i was quickly ushered to a separate door onto the plane! that's right people, you don't turn left any more you get a whole entrance to yourself to keep away the rif-raf!

My seat is something else, its lie flat, its almost a cabin to itself i have so much space and i currently have my feet up on my Ottoman! Oh yeah... that's right and later will recline it into full bed mode!

After my pre-flight champagne and hot towel, its time for dinner... Just the 5 courses and my choice of wines, cocktails and spirits, my table has just been adorned with a pristine white table cloth... I am excited!

Starter - parma ham with cheese, salad and bread with olive oil & Vinegar
Soup - Potato with croutons
Main - Beef Cheek with sprouts, potato and beetroot
Cheese - a selection cheeses with grapes, crackers and a lovely port
Desert - Chocolate brownie

(I should think its now clear why i came to regret eating in the airport, but if im gonna eat like a king it may as well be henry the 8th!)

Dear god I'm stuffed, the lights have just been turned out at 22:35 so it must be bed time, had a few vinos with my dinner, so sleep shouldn't be too tough... Or so I thought until i combined a few contributing factors. Firstly let me say this I fully appreciate that compared to Economy this was the best 4 hours and 20 mins sleep anyone has ever gotten...however I would like to paint you a picture.

For starters, the lie flat seat concept on planes is fantastic... for normal sized humans, whilst i wasn't exactly cramped, my feet felt completely stuffed into the strange box whole that becomes the end of your bed and due to other bits of the seat around you, there is very little space to bend your legs, unless, as I did at one point, you give up and sleep with one leg out of the bed and on the floor in the gangway.

So, as an opening gambit, I'm sure your thinking, aww, poor little tall boy couldn't get comfortable in his plane bed and your sarcasm is not unwarranted, so let me throw in a fun fact that most of you know but might not have considered... I have a sleep Apnoea... I have to sleep connected to a surgical mask that has to be plugged in. So now i have the plastic hose from that snaked over me... Oh and the seatbelts for a lie flat chair bed thingamabob... They are three point like a car, so now I'm strapped down to a small table-like bed with a surgical type oxygen mask on, with one foot on the floor and I can hear 2 things, someone snoring (not me... Mask was working) and a kid in front of me crying... So i decided to sleep with my headphones on to drown out the noise.. So now I'm strapped down to a small-table like bed thingy that goes into a weird little whole, that my feet don't quite fit into, so one of them is on the floor, I have an anaesthetist mask strapped to my face with 2 straps, a pair of headphones over the top of that, wires and surgical hoses hanging all over me... And yet I managed to sleep! Go me!

Little shout out to the bathroom, whilst not exactly a world away from any other air plane bathroom did have L’octane moisturiser and Toner... For the men reading... Dunno, I assume it is another type of lotion...small disposable combs, not much use for my bald head, disposable tooth brushes and sachets of toothpaste and mouth wash... Its the little things.
After my adventures in sleeping I have just over 3 hours left of my first flight after which I i get a few hours in Seoul Airport (at which point I’m hoping to get wifi and post this) followed by another 10 hours down to Sydney where I'm sure I'll get to do all of the above again!

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