Gatwick Airport, 12:33pm, 26/01/2008

Arrived with plenty of time to spare, enough to gather my bearings and become bemused at the scale of it all. Looking at the screens, I half expected to see train destinations, London Euston, Edinburgh etc, but instead was greeted with Budapest, Cologne, Orlando and some other far off places; surreal as I've never been on a commercial flight before, just RAF ones which went between Cagliari and various places in the UK (with a brief stop-over in Germany).

At the moment I'm in the airport lounge, after being told to remove my belt, shoes, coat, backpack and any items in my pockets, only to have to put them on ten seconds later after they'd been scanned. I do wonder if they 'catch' anything going through.. Skimping around the large duty free shopping area is something to behold, my iPod touch (8GB) which I bought the day after release in November for £199 is £158 in Dixons Tax Free, that's a pretty substantial saving, especially so if you're buying a new computer, simply buy a cheap flight out (£10 seems to be the cheapest around, although my aunt recently went with Ryanair and only spent 1p), go into the duty free zone and splurge away. You can save hundreds on a MacBook pro (£200 off the basic model), another £40+ off the latest iPods, as well as DVDs and games also taking a worthwhile knock down. I'm due to board at 12:50pm, off for now!