Ms Baroque is back in England

Oh yes. You can tell you're back in England the minute you're in Heath Bloody Row. Oh, and the trolley situation on the Heathrow Express! so that a single lone woman travelling with three cases, one of which had to have overweight paid on it and can't be lifted by her no matter what, not even onto a trolley once she finds one and puts a sodding pound into it (lucky she had one, possibly unlike other travellers just arrived in the country; unbelievably, not every country uses pound coins) and drags her suitcases over to it, all piled up, at huge danger to her wrists and their wheel mechanisms, must look in vain for a cheerful porter or attendant or anyone who might help her at all.

Oh, and that's AFTER getting the bags back, which was a complete miracle in the first place and took forty minutes and the assistance of two surly uncommunicative recalcitrant and unpleasant men (who, even at that, were better than the American Airlines counter, which I never even reached at all: the one girl sitting there was taking fifteen minutes with each query). There were people from three flights in the queue there waiting to find out where their bags might be, & loads of people I recognised from mine were wandering around hypothesising that maybe or bags hadn't even come out yet. Every single conveyor belt had huge numbers of cases sitting beside it. My bags were eventually discovered - by me, with no help actually at that stage - sitting forlornly on the far side of the very last conveyor belt, which also had bags sitting forlornly on the near side; the flight number had been removed from all screens, probably long before anyone actually on the flight had made it out of Immigration (I for example got through nearly two hours after the plane had finally landed), and no one knew where it might be, until the one attendant who out of the goodness of his heart did find out for me.

One good thing though - at least the utter shambolic chaos of Heathrow's baggage claim department makes the chaos of Baroque Mansions look relatively manageable. The Urban Warrior says he is going to figure out how to get acrylic paint out of carpets and bedding; I think the green will still show even if he does, but one can hope. The food will arrive in about three hours. The laundry is doing, great heaps of it everywhere. I've got the kitchen pretty clean in all its main areas, and the floor is better than it was. And the cleaner, thank God, is coming back again tomorrow! (She was ostensibly here on Wednesday, but this is incredible to me: there's not one shred of evidence to support the theory. Just tons of dirt and dirty things and cigarette butts everywhere.) I just hope we can get the Urban Warrior's computer and speakers out of my living room (as regular readers know, also the baroque boudoir) before then.

One good sign, though: I seem to be out of air freshener.