Today was the start of the 2017 trip to France. It started at midnight with stragglers from the 70th birthday party of old friend Ian Johnston sitting around a table with a few glasses of red solving the problems of the world. My friendship with Ian goes back to the 1970s when I worked at Monash University and Ian joined us on staff from the UK. He came with a reputation as a good rugby player, so the party that started yesterday afternoon had a good sprinkling of Monash Civil Engineering people and mates from the Monash rugby team. A photo of the CivEng people shows how well we’ve aged, although there was lots of talk, especially amongst the Rugby brigade of hip, knee and ankle surgeries - I guess I have been lucky to have avoided such problems to date. I happened to find my old Monash Rugby jumper on the morning of the party, so I wore it for old times sake. Everyone was impressed that it still fitted, but it was pretty loose on me when I was in my playing years.

One of the signs of a good friendship is that, even after not seeing each other for years, you can just pick up the conversation from where you left off. This happened so easily with Ian and Felicity (closest to me in the photo above). When I originally mentioned that I was flying out today, they immediately offered me a bed to stay the night after the party. I had originally intended to come down from Taggerty on the bus and then take a tram to their place, but when I found that the morning bus did not run from Taggerty on Sundays, I was left with no alternative but to drive down. When I mentioned this to them last week, they offered that I could leave my car with them, and they would then do a weekend trip to bring it up to Taggerty in a few weeks time, AND they would then retrieve it and bring it back down for me just before I return in mid-September. Now that’s what I call friendship. So after Ian drove me out to the airport, I was ready to begin the odyssey, once again flying with Singapore Airlines, taking advantage of the use of KrisFlyer points from previous trips to reduce the cost of my flight by 15%.

As always I enjoyed my first Scotch’n’Dry on the plane, and after perusing the film list decided to read instead, until I got a few hours sleep on the leg to Singapore, and then many hours sleep on the flight to Zurich. The transfer time in Singapore was just long enough to find the electronics duty free shop and buy a protective cover for my new iPhone 7+. When the menu came around on the flight, it reminded me once again of the great party for Ian last night.