Nodnol

I'm sitting in Gatwick airport, waiting for my flight to Dublin which has been delayed by three hours. With luck, I should arrive back in Dublin by a-quarter-past one.

I left for London at 10:50 in the morning on Saturday with my friend Conall. Conall was moving to London and I offered to join him for the road trip. We got the ferry over from Dublin Port to Holyhead.

On the ferry over, I did notice something that drove me nuts. One could upgrade one's ticket to a “Club Class” ticket for 15 euro. For this, you got slightly nicer seats and a cup of tea; but the main benefit was the opportunity to pay more money for better food.

Food choice was segregated by class. Classist bastards!

The scenery on the way through Wales was stunning, but I forgot my camera so unfortunately I don't have any pictures.

We travelled from Holyhead, down through Wales, and into England. On the way, we saw a sign for Oulton Park and headed in, catching a bit of a race, which was cool.

We hit central London at about half-eight at night. Traffic was a nightmare, and we didn't quite know where we were going. Conall, worn out by the long drive, started to literally go blind with a dull rage as his vision narrowed to a tunnel. Thankfully, we managed to find his accommodations before he descended into a babbling madness or “the elves” (his words) took over.

On Sunday, we headed out to Brands Hatch to watch the first ever A1 Grand Prix. I watched part of the feature race from the hospitality lounge of the Irish team, and even managed to head down to the Irish garage at the pits (and saw the Irish car wheeled in just feet from me).

It's a about what happened to our team. Michael Devaney was hit on the third corner of the first lap of the feature race (after impressively climbing from tenth to fifth) and was knocked out of the race. When we got to the Irish team's office, someone from Sky Sports walked in to ask Michael for an interview, saying that he “must seem like the Grim Reaper at times like this”. Michael didn't seem to mind.

I won't forget seeing the car from the Lebanon roll in the air less than twenty metres from me. That was unreal. You can find out more about the race at the MotorSport Vision news page.

I got some work done today, and headed into London for some Starbucks, the “Help: A Day in the Life” album, mass pigeon assault (forty plus of the bastards), a goodbye and the train to Gatwick.

And just to prove that I can't escape the nutters no matter where I go, while Conall and I ran for the bus to Victoria station, a man on a bike with a bandana covering most of his face roared at us: “Do we have some nutters here? Would you like a bullet up the Khyber?”

What a pleasant fellow.