Monday 6th June, Flight BA860 from London Heathrow to Prague...

Waiting to take off...

First, let's get all the commercial crap out of the way. I hate it. As soon as I am through security – which this time was relatively painless – I found myself surrounded by booze and perfume and then watches and expensive leather goods, clothes shops and so forth. I was elated to note that shops like Tiffany, Bvlgari and other big brand names I'm having difficulty remembering were all empty, no customers whatsoever, it was so heartening. I've always hated the false notion that air travel is somehow glamorous and that we should all be considering some Beluga caviar before we fly (another shop, incidentally, that had no customers, much to my amusement, all those oysters going to waste, I thought).

Unfortunately for me I'm still on antibiotics, thanks to my last trip abroad. The course finishes tomorrow, but I almost forgot and ordered a chicken burger, which I swiftly cancelled, keeping only the mineral water in order to swallow my pill at the desired time, which just so happened to be at lunch time. I had the prospect of not eating for one hour, which was very depressing especially when I later discovered that the inflight service consisted of a bag of crisps. If I wanted anything else, I was told, I should have ordered something on the BA shopping app prior to flying, except that nobody told me about this. Next time I'll buy food before I fly, I thought. The other option was to use the app to order something from the limited selection they had on board, which was rubbish and consisted only of coffee and a couple of biscuits. And considering that I was now at 30,000 feet and the option of pre-ordering was out of the question, it was all I had left. I made the cabin crew work. I had many questions and I needed them to help me use the app in order to buy an awful cup of black coffee and those biscuits. The coffee came in the shape of a coffee bag which I had to place in a paper mug of hot water they had given me. The coffee was awful, no taste at all despite claiming to offer 'notes of dark chocolate and burnt caramel'. I squeezed the bag as per the instructions on the back but it made no difference, it was still absolutely awful. So much for their 'Signature Blend'. 

Looking down at the M25...

To use the app, the cabin crew told me I had to take the phone off airplane mode (which made me a little apprehensive as I imagined the plane suddenly nose-diving and the captain coming out and saying "whoever's turned their phone off airplane mode, switch it back on" and then the plane levelling out). Nothing of the sort happened, fortunately. 

The biscuit and the coffee set me back a fiver and didn't represent value for money in my world. The annoying thing here, of course, was that once again, I found myself being forced to eat rubbish. I had no dinner on Sunday night because there wasn't any food, no breakfast for the same reason the following morning and then no lunch because I had to take an antibiotic at a specific time and I was really looking forward to the inflight meal, but it wasn't to be thanks to British Airways, the airline that likes to disappoint its customers.

The flight was only 90 minutes and as I looked at  my watch, I realised we had started our descent. As soon as we land I'm going to grab something decent to eat, I thought to myself. I was really glad that I got the cabin crew working on that app. I was like a dog with a bone.

The captain said the weather conditions in Prague were 'cheerful', which was more than could be said for BA's food offering. The muddy water they passed off as coffee was a joke as, indeed was the whole experience. I think the crew thought that nobody would be bothered to use the app, but I proved them wrong. They're probably still cursing me as I write this; at least I hope they are!

BA's idea of lunch!

Outside the window and far below me, there were green fields and sunshine and scattered cloud. When I looked at my watch, there was around 15 minutes until we landed. I could see little villages below and the usual patchwork quilt of corn fields and grass fields dissected by narrow country lanes and peppered here and there with forests, the occasional river and even a few wind farms. Ten minutes to landing.

Once down, getting through security was a doddle, so was baggage reclaim and then I spotted a cafeteria, a spacious place with hardly any customers. There was a servery counter so I ordered a pasta and chicken dish and a decent dessert and chilled for a few minutes before finding a taxi and heading for the Grandior Hotel.

Postscript: Just going back to British Airways again, one thing I always used to enjoy was reading John Simpson's column in the High Life magazine, but now it's not available as a print publication – or so it seems. Now it's an app that you can read (I'd imagine with huge difficulty) on a mobile phone. I didn't bother. Fucking apps!