On said flight the predictable jetlag delirium was joined by a new bedfellow. In Heathrow at 11 am, flush with the expensable company dollar, my fellow unfortunates (all three of my immediate bosses included) and I decided to have a beer while discussing the week’s proposed agenda of tedium. On an empty stomach this livened things up considerably, and was helped along by a lukewarm can of foamy Canadian lager once on the flight. Some coffee and coke then combined with the above to visit upon me a truly evil dehydration headache. The airline lunch/dinner (dunch? Linner?) hit my stomach like a mallet and started it churning ferociously, so that I was firmly in the grip of a two-pronged artificial hangover and and felt unutterably dreadful for the next nine hours.

What an awesome flight that was.

We’re staying in Richmond, a satellite city half an hour south of Vancouver, and (just) visible through the smog, fog, rain or whatever the prevailing near-opaque atmospheric condition is, are the distant Rocky Mountains. Their sheer size borders on the “Surely they can’t be that big” front – Richmond is built on flat, reclaimed land and even though they’re some hours away by car, the mountains still dominate the whole of the northern horizon. Richmond, on the other hand, seems smaller than it really is: the town itself feels vaguely frontier-like, with a set of railroad tracks near the hotel cutting a barren, weedy trail into the wintry distance, and many of the houses looking just that bit weatherbeaten and dilapidated.

Anyway, we’ve been eating and continue to eat like people determined to commit suicide by cholesterol, while I continue to gaze northward out of the nearest window and try to throw something pertinent into the discussion every half hour or so. This business travel malarkey isn’t all it’s cracked up to be! Still, Ash arrives tomorrow and Whistler beckons. I am much relieved.