The house is quiet although I can hear Anne busying herself somewhere. She is always doing something. Outside I note that not all of the wood pigeons have been eaten by our local population of peregrine falcons. I can hear their irritating whoop. Who on earth designed that whoop. Distinctive OK but a most annoying birdcall.
Struggling to get the day going in the shed. Have stuck the Classic FM Hall of Fame on Spotify to try and ease me into it. It’s probably on days like this that it would be handy to be in an office and have a chat with the team, about anything really. Not that much would get done. Just coffee consumed.
Visits to the office are a thing of the past really. Our office is in Belgium. For me to be there at 9am I have to set off at lunchtime the day before. It’s essentially a 3 hour journey to London, a two hour wait in the Eurostar lounge and then a 3 hour leg to the Hilton Garden Inn in Brussels. A 1pm setoff would see me at the hotel bar for 10pm. Ish. I suspect I used to prefer to get in earlier than that to have dinner somewhere. The food on Eurostar isn’t worth the effort, even in Business Class. The wait time does reduce if you pay for it but the flexible business class ticket is £250 each way, maybe a hundred quid more than the semi flex. What it really buys you is 5 minutes through check in versus perhaps 45 minutes or more. Also access to the lounge & booze although if you travel often enough you get that anyway with Carte Blanche.
Needless to say I no longer have Carte Blanche. I am also now only Silver with BA and can see a further slide to Bronze which means no lounge access. I suspect that with the low frequency of travel in future I’ll just pay to go business class anyway. The most important added benefits are advanced seat reservation, lounge access and priority boarding. If you can get that using status as opposed to paying for business class then that is all you need.
On a plane trip there is always a clash between the lounge access and advanced seat reservation even when travelling business class. If you don’t get on early then the bastards sat further back who get on before you fill up the overhead locker space. The last thing you want is to have to check your carry on into the hold as it defeats the object of only taking carry on luggage.
The situation is different when travelling long haul. Such journeys require business class travel as a minimum and there is generally no issue with locker space. It is then all about how much you want to get the boarding process out of the way and get settled into your seat for the flight. You want to leave time for the pre flight glass of champagne.
If travelling in first on a long haul flight this is probably only worth it if you are flying out of LHR T5 when you can avail yourself of the benefits of the Concorde Lounge and then you need to think about getting to the airport at least 3 hours before the fight is due to take off. The Concorde Lounge is the pinnacle of airport lounges with full service restaurant and cocktail bar (actually similar to Virgin Clubhouse as I recall but it’s decades since I went to one of those). You can also book an Elemis massage.
How you use the Concorde Lounge is going to depend on time of travel. The breakfasts are good but at that time of day you don’t really want to hit the bar. If it is an afternoon flight then make it a light lunch and a couple of cocktails so as not to spoil your appetite on the long flight ahead.
If it isn’t out of LHR then the added cost of the first class cabin needs to be weighed against the improved bed. That’s really the difference. The food and drink in first might be better than business class but really none of it is much cop and it’s down to how much you value having a decent bed and duvet plus faster disembarkation at your destination.
Even then the faster arrivals bit is only going to make much difference either if you pay for an expedited service where available or if in the USA you have Global Entry status which makes a massive difference and is very much worth having. The benefits of Global Entry are somewhat negated if you are travelling with someone who doesn’t have it.
Anyway on with the day. It’s meetings meetings meetings all afternoon innit.