Columbus, Ohio: Heading home...

The Brekkie Shack in Columbus, Ohio, close to the Aloft hotel, has a good vibe to it. It's bright and breezy and there's loads of decent 'brekkie' options including the House Made Granola Bowl of yogurt topped with in-season fruit and chia-sunflower seed granola, not forgetting a honey drizzle. That and a mug of green tea and I was set up for the day. I have to say that I've been eating decent food out here, not too much of the burger and fries, which is the default cuisine in the USA. There was plenty of temptation to eat badly, like an amazing-looking carrot cake and other 'cakey' stuff that was crying out to be eaten, but I resisted and left the the place feeling good about myself and, therefore, life in general. 

The plan was to head for the so-called German Village, a district of Columbus, and a book shop called the Book Loft. Here was a book shop that consisted of different rooms full of different types of books and if you're in to books it's the place to be. I didn't buy anything because I've got enough books on the go already. James O'Brien's How they Broke Britain and Thurston Moore's Sonic Life are the books in question. I didn't want to add another one to the mix.

Katzinger's Delicatessen, German Village, Columbus

After lunch in Katzinger's Delicatessen it was time to head back to the hotel and start packing for tomorrow's long journey home: two flights, one from Columbus to New York's JFK airport and then the transatlantic hop to London, although that word 'hop' is probably an understatement. 

Later, with grey skies and the rain hammering down, I stood under cover outside the Aloft Columbus hotel. There was a man on a down-at-heel-looking push bike with a rear wheel puncture. He couldn't fix it because he didn't have a repair kit and was standing there soaking wet wearing a blue cagoule preparing himself for the moment when he'd somehow make a dash for it. I looked at the rain and wondered how the hell I would get to the Starbucks across the parking lot without getting soaked. And then I remembered the base ball caps in my room. I'd been at an event where some of the stands offered freebies in the shape of tee-shirts and baseball caps. I had around four of them upstairs in my room so I turned on my heels and found the cleaner in my room. "It's your room, you can stay here if you like," she said as she changed the sheets on the bed. And yes I could have stayed and made small talk but I preferred to let her get on with her job. I told her she could have one of the baseball caps and then headed downstairs to tackle the rain. The walk to the Starbucks was less than five minutes across an exposed parking lot and when I reached my destination I wasn't that wet. I ordered an English breakfast tea and tried to read O'Brien's masterpiece. I was about to finish the Jeremy Corbyn chapter and then move on to the one about Dominic Cummings, but simply couldn't face it. I know the story, I've lived it: the Brexit lies, the bigotry, the racism, the British thinking they're something special when they're far from it; so after a short while I simply sat there drinking my tea and looking out of the window. Eventually the rain stopped and I was able to walk back across the lot to the hotel without fear of a soaking.

Our last dinner in Columbus was at the Cap Diner. There were no seats in the restaurant but there was room in a kind of temporary area, or additional space, which had a canvas roof and heaters to keep away the cold, although they didn't do a brilliant job. The rain hammered down on the roof as we awaited our food. I changed seats so I was a little closer to the source of heat but it wasn't brilliant and when the food arrived I was disappointed to note that I had been given two chicken breasts rather than the one I had expected. This, was, of course, America where the portions are huge, and because I'd been eating lightly most of the week I could barely finish the meal. I managed the chicken breasts but I left the vegetables. Catherine opted for two starters, which were more manageable than my one main course. On the next table a woman received her dessert: a huge chocolate cake at least a foot high.How anybody could eat THAT much chocolate cake I don't know, but she took it in her stride and laughed as she scoffed it. Cardiac Care Unit, here we come, I thought as I watched her pigging it with inner disgust. We passed on dessert and headed back to our respective hotel rooms, me in room 626 and Catherine in 526 directly below me on the fifth floor.

House made Granola Bowl, Brekkie Shack

It was early but it was time to hit the sack, do some last minute packing and then leave the Aloft and head to the airport. But first a 'game' of pool. The inverted commas are because neither of us were any good and, therefore, the game wasn't at all real, we were just trying to pot the balls regardless of the rules and it was more fun than playing for real.

I set my alarm for 0700 and then lay in bed until I fell asleep. I awoke numerous times before the alarm went off and I jumped out of bed and set about packing. For me it was always going to be a case of 'last minute packing' as I figured putting stuff back in the case would be easy. There's something awful about checking out. I've never liked it and I can't understand why, but the very thought of packing stuff away, trying to cram everything into a suitcase, has never appealed. I managed to get everything in and after a shower I headed down to the lobby where I met Catherine and we both walked across the lot to the aforementioned Starbucks for our last breakfast where we had been eating the same thing all week: granola with yoghurt and some kind of jam, not forgetting an English breakfast tea for me and an iced coffee for Catherine.

Our time in Columbus had run out and we jumped into an Uber and headed for the airport. There was time for tea at a Starbucks when we got there and then we boarded the flight to New York/JFK. The flight was full and I hate full flights. I sat next to an Egyptian Professor of English Literature. She was travelling to New York where she has a 20-hour stop-over and is planning to get a hotel room. From Doha she flies on to Cairo to be with family and friends and then she comes back to a new job. Currently, she's at OSU (Ohio State University). It was a short flight and there was a little turbulence at the end, but soon we found ourselves in JFK looking for somewhere to have lunch before the transatlantic night flight to London Heathrow. Our choice of restaurant was O'Neal's and it wasn't that brilliant. I ordered a chicken burger with fries and a no-alcohol beer and Catherine had a vegetarian dish of some sort and a Coke, it might have been a vegetable-based burger.

There was no menu, just a QR code on the table. The idea was that we ordered on our phones. I'm thinking about buying a Nokia 3310 so that they have to provide me with a paper menu or I'll take my custom elsewhere. I can't stand it. Tech complicates everything. I can't go swimming these days without logging in to an app, so I don't bother going. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a technophobe, it just annoys me when people put blind faith in technology. Even placing a boarding pass in the 'wallet' on my iphone is crap, especially when the phone runs out of power and I have to ask for a paper boarding pass. This happened recently in Helsinki.

I wandered around the airport and found a food court area just to sit down and write a few things in my notepad. Catherine was elsewhere doing her own thing and we met up later at the gate and sat there chatting for around an hour before it was time to board the plane. I was in seat 18C, which offered a lot of much-needed legroom, but there were two people sitting to my left and in front of them was a couple, meaning that in terms of legroom I had the best deal.

It turned out the flight was around six hours, which was brilliant and I passed the time reading Sonic Life by Thurston Moore, which is an excellent book. I never watched television or listened to music and as the flight was so short I focused almost entirely on pondering what I had just read. There was no turbulence.

We landed around 0640 having been scheduled to touch down around 0740. There was a slight delay after the plane had come to a halt as they didn't appear to have any buses. I quipped with a fellow passenger that the first negative voice we heard had to be English and of course I was right.

The plan was to get an Uber home, but I wasn't sure how it all worked and then considered waiting around for a 'normal' taxi or jumping on the Heathrow Express to Paddington and then travelling on the Underground to Victoria. But no, not after a transatlantic flight, so I hoofed it back to the third floor of Heathrow's car park and then waiting for an Uber. There was problems on the M25, something to do with a bridge, and this meant going through London: Hammersmith, over the Thames on the Wandsworth bridge, through South London and home. I was feeling fine and sat around chatting for a short while, but then decided it would be good to get some sleep so I hit the sack and woke up around 1600hrs. We took a drive early evening to Oxted for an Italian meal and then I sat up until 0100hrs watching Clarkson's Farm on Amazon Prime. 

I slept well, woke up, had breakfast and then around mid-morning headed off to Knole for a breath of much-needed fresh air after a bowl of pea and mint soup and a chocolate chip cookie, not forgetting a pot of tea.

It's almost 1800hrs on Sunday evening and the sun is shining, the trees appear to be in full bloom, my lemon balm plant is out and so is everything else.. Summer arrived while I was away. I left a cold and rainy United Kingdom and returned to a sunny, warm country. I'm feeling pretty tired so I'll stop writing now.

Starbucks across from the Aloft Hotel, Columbus Ohio.