After countless minutes hours of quiet consideration, I have decided to give my Friendly Fires gig tickets to John Blackwood. Many congratulations, John! You beat off some stiff competition.

1. 1. John blackwood says:

      May 13, 2009 at 10:44 pm

      iwant the tickets because me and ma girlfriend love the fires! i intended to ask her to marry me mid gig, but the guy on gumtree i was going to buy the tickets of has let me down.

It was a difficult decision to make and I had no idea quite how many people there are out there who would give me such compelling reasons to win. I’d like to thank you all for taking the time to write a message – you’re all beautiful people and I now wish I had fifty tickets to give out instead of only two.

It was a very close call between about 6 of you, but in the end i I felt positively compelled to give them to John, who plans to propose to his girlfriend during the gig. Wowzers!

John, I have emailed you the .pdf file containing the tickets. Print them out and you’re good to go. Drop me a line if you have any problems and if for some reason you won’t be able to attend, please let me know asap so that I can pass the tickets on to a runner-up.

I really hope that you enjoy the gig and far more importantly, I hope that she says ‘yes’! We’d be delighted if you could let us know how it goes, and if you manage to take any pics, I’ll stick them on the site for all to admire.

I hope you’ll all join me in wising John the very best of luck. Sorry to all who missed out.

Love, peace and big hugs,

Andy
x

P.S. Ellie: I hope that this won’t stop you from winking at tramps. Karma will come good in the end, I’m positive.
Matt: I’m a bit gutted to miss out on the foot rub. Ho hum.
Mike: I sincerely hope that your friend makes a good recovery.
Gaz: I hope that you still take your girlfriend to Paris. (my favourite song too btw)
Leanne: You deserve better!
Caroline: I couldn’t live with myself if I was responsible for you overheating again. I recommend an outdoor gig next time!
Gem: Sounds like a Sunday afternoon at the pub is in order!
Mel: I’m sorry to tell you that I don’t really have anything to do with the radio.
Kev: Shouldn’t you be with the Mrs on the day she’s due to give birth!?
Moon: Why not surprise your friend with a cupcake? They’re cheap, and everybody love cupcakes, right!?

Here’s a fun competition for you. I have a pair of tickets for the Friendly fires gig at The forum, Kentish Town for Friday night (15th May). I can no longer go, because I’ll be about a hundred miles away at the time, so I’d like to give them away to someone deserving.

All you need to do to win the tickets is to add a comment to this post (below), telling me why I should give them to you. The person with the most convincing reason by 5pm on Thursday, 14th will win them… simple as that!

Be sure to include your email address in the space provided, because I will email the tickets to the winner.

When I say pros, I mean those who fly long haul with work on a weekly basis. These people need to get through a long flight and walk straight into a meeting, looking sharp and being switched on.

Claire is a frequent flyer and I’m sure she’d agree that, unless you have a fully flat bed-seat, you’ll be uncomfortable no matter which airline, class or destination you choose. And sleep? Well, that’s pretty unlikely. On the red eye, you have the inital disturbance of people settling in. Then you have some sort of dinner service, drinks and then the clear up. It’s a good 2 or more hours before the lights will be dimmed and things calm down. And then what? An hour or more before landing, you’ll be woken again with the abrupt switch-on of the lights and a dry shrink-wrapped muffin and some gut-rotting coffee to sink before you’re released back into society. An 8 hour flight might yield 2 or 3 hours of sleep if you’re lucky.

So how do you beat the system? Enter our hero.

On the flight back from New York, we witnessed a guy who so clearly does it every week that he has the system nailed. He did not rely on rapidly downing as many units alcohol as possible before the lights go out. Oh no, he was asleep long before the lights went out. I’m going to do my best here to document our hero’s step-by-step guide to flying like a winner:

1. Plan ahead

If you have any ability to choose your seat, you should absolutely take this up whether it’s in advance of the trip, or on the day of travel at the check-in desk. Key criteria:

• Be as far forward in the plane as possible. Business or first class tickets help by default here. There’s something about being closer to the font that seems to lessen the roller-coaster feeling upon ascent and descent.
• Be as far forward in your chosen cabin as possible, subject the other rules below. The main benefit of this is that you’ll be served more quickly, and therefore be able to get to sleep sooner.
• Try and get a window seat if you can. Alternatively, you want a seat that doesn’t block someone else in. A weak bladder next to you could spell interruption after interruption.
• Ideally avoid a row near to the lavatories or the galleys. People will congregate and disturb you.

2. Board the plane as early as possible

The professional flyers’ regime will take a little effort up-front and it’s a good idea to get started without others around to get in your way. If you are travelling buiness or first, you should get the option to board the plane first. Take this up. Don’t worry, you’ll be asleep before long.

3. Get comfortable

This is going to come down to personal preference, but our hero immediately removed his shoes and put flight socks on over his own socks. You’re also going to want to get the blanket out and a pillow if you want one.

3. Prepare for a quick exit

The rule here is to go for simplicity. Don’t get anything out that you don’t absolutely need during the flight. Our hero had with him solely an iPod. He then placed his shoes neatly into a small plastic bag each and stored them beneath his seat.

4. Get into Do Not Disturb mode

Steps 4 and 5 are the most important in the whole process. Do these well and you’ll get the r&r that you need and deserve. Do Not Disturb mode requires that you block out the rest of the world and avoid the necessity for all distruptions with the exception of those absolutley necessary in steps 5 and 6 below. Here’s how you get into Do Not Disturb mode:

• Review the menu, choose your bland meal and write the follwing on the back of the menu in block capitals: “PLEASE WAKE ME FOR THE MEAL. I’LL HAVE THE CHICKEN”
• Find a gap or nook somewhere on the seatback in front of you and stuff the menu in so that your instructions are clearly visible to the flight crew
• Put your iPod headphones is and crank up your personal choice of music to sleep to. I’m going to go with MJ Cole – Back to Mine
• Fasten your seatbelt
• Adorn your blanket. Crucially, we put this on over the seatbelt
• Put your supplied eye-mask on
• Drift off until you are rudely awoken

5. Make others aware of the consequences of disturbing you

You’ll notice that in step 4, we committed the cardinal sin of obscuring the view of the seatbelt. This is a necessary step. As early as possible in the flight, you will need to be awoken in order to give the staff your most infuriated, disgusted, disappointed face. This tells the crew, as well as whoever is lucky enough to be sat beside you, that waking you up, disturbing you or otherwise doing anything too loudly is most definitely not to be recommended. Not without your permission anyway. This is your opportunity to show them who’s boss. You’re the seasoned veteran of air travel and you’ll be damned if some hunchbacked, toothless simpleton is going to stand between you and the hours of sleep that you’re so looking forward to. After you have complied with the firm but polite request to fasten your seatbelt on top of your blanket, you will be free to get some well deserved kip before meal time.

6. Get the meal out of the way

The meal will be the last time that you’re disturbed before morning. If you managed to sit towards the front, you’ll be served earlier and they’ll clear it up earlier too. Your helpful instructions should mean that you’ll be gently caressed back into consciousness with your meal sat in front of you. Splendid.

Once you’ve finished eating and neatly piled the empty single-serving containers on the tray, you’re finally ready for some quality shut-eye.

7. Final flourish. The fine art of the moving blanket

You  have a little latitude here. For the novice, I’d recommend getting suited back up as per step 4 (adjusting for seatbelt placement, of course) and settling into your slumber. The more advanced traveller may, however, wish end the flight with a final demonstration of superiority. Enter the moving blanket:

This is a feat that will take some practice to master but once perfected, others will look on in awe whilst you sleep peacefully until your blanket awakens you shorlty before landing. Using this technique, you will no longer need your eye-mask. Instead, you pull the blanket up over your head and go to sleep. Throughout the remainder of the flight, little by little the blanket will creep down. First across your head, later down your forhead and finally below your eyes. At this point, the cabin lights will wake you up and you’ll be ready to ditch the flying gear, put your shoes on and get the hell outta there.

To our hero from Virgin flight VS10 out of JFK, we salute you, sir.

At lunch time, Rich and I wandered down to Little Venice to take some snaps. Here are a few:

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We go from time to time to enjoy a fantastic Thai meal at one of our favourite restaurants, the Chao Phraya. The picture below is of a six foot Buddha statue, sat just outside. I find something about Buddha deeply calming. He oozes some semce of inner peace and contentedness that seems to be so lacking throughout our western culture.

Having just finished reading “What they teach you at Harvard Business School”, I find that my thoughts about the (seemingly unsuccessful) pursuit of contentedness in our society are utterly supported and underpinned by the author’s eloquent description of the culture engendered at HBS, as well as what seems to be half hypocracy / half internal struggle that the students seem to battle with: make lots of money, or enjoy a fulfilling life that you can share with your friends and family. I didn’t see a single example of these two competing forces overlapping.

Claire and I stayed at 42 The Calls this time (instead of the usual Malmaison), and I think I speak for both of us when I say that it was really excellent. Especially room service breakfast in bed with the Sunday papers. Even if it was the Observer.

We arrived at Koh Samui and the next step was to grab a bus across the island and get the Lomphraya ferry to Koh Tao. This was where it got interesting. The catamaran was a lot like the Red Jet that crosses the solent to the Isle of Wight. Clean, lots of seats, and pretty quick. All started off well on what was set to be a two and a half hour crossing (via Koh Phangan), but then it all went a bit downhill:
1) Alvin and the Chipmunks came on the tv screens
2) The wind picked up from being a gentle tropical breeze and turned into something more akin to a tropical storm. Clouds turned grey, then sort of black, which brought on;
3) *big* waves. And then much sickness all around us. Fortunately, Claire and I were made of stronger stuff than the Japanese folks, who stopped taking photos and started being sick.

The problem with the big waves and general Posieden Adventure atmosphere was that the best way not to get sick was to watch the TV. Yep. We saw the whole damn movie. The saving grace was the fact that the sound was a bit dodgy and kept cutting out.

So, after a generally tortuous crossing, we arrived at our destination. Oh no. Wait. This isn’t it. No, because due to the typhoon in the Phillipines (source of the windy weather), the tides were also a little confused, so the tide was too low to be able to dock in Mae Head. Unbeknown to the passengers, we’d gone beyond it and docked at Koh Nang Yuan. We were duly kicked off the boat and ushered onto smaller, less sturdy looking boats sans luggage and ferried back to Mae Head. Fortunately, the bags did turn up about 10 minutes after we arrived, although that gap would have been a lot bigger if the skipper (is that the right term?) of our boat had any ability to park. It took him 20 mins of wiggling in and out to get there. Still. We made it in the end – and we weren’t sick once.

After doing the all important unpacking and opening of beers from our full sized in-room fridge, we headed out for the evening…

We had drinks at the Fizz bar – where I also got to meet Claire’s little (big) bro, and then had gorgeous dinner on the beach at King Crab. Mmmmmm. Marlin.

At some point I’ll try and take some photos…..

I’m writing this message from a computer in the ’boutique lounge’ of Bangkok Airways at the airport. That’s right – lounge access baby. The benefits include: coffee, orange juice and olympic cookies. They have raisins in, so Claire steered clear. (a wise choice)

We spent last night at the Novotel Airpot hotel, which was beautiful… Quite a step up from the Novotel Bristol.

First impressions of Thailand have been great, and Bangkok airport is far and away the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. They even have good art on the walls! Sadly it’s all pretty big, and screwed down – so no souvenirs for me.

We’re off to Koh Samui shortly, ready for our boat trip across to Koh Tao. Can’t wait!

We should be off out this afternoon to go shopping and get some dinner in Nottingham. Thai perhaps? Then the proper bit of the journey begins tomorrow. We’re flying with Etihad from Manchester. Claire tells me that they’re the luxury carrier of the middle east… But she’s always trying to pull the wool over my eyes, so I could be surrounded by chickens and goats for all I know.

First stop: Abu Dhabi… I’m told it’s good for watch shopping. A Patek maybe?

More importantly, I’ve got my Priority Pass card that comes with the hugely expensive Amex Platinum, so I plan to fill my pockets with cheap biscuits from the first class lounge. I need to recoup the fee somehow…

More exciting: I’m off to Thailand on Saturday. Ever-so-slightly excited about that one.