Monday: The plan was to spend the 7 hours flying to Ottawa listening to my iPod on-the-go playlist that I put together the night before. As soon as the seatbelt sign turned off I was switched on…

Gosh, my Sennheiser PXC 250 NoiseGard™ headphones were good. Just a tiny bit of rumble during the quieter moments, but pretty oblivious the rest of the time that I was flying at the back of a 767-300. Of course it makes communicating with your neighbour a little more difficult.

Still, she was watching Elektra. As much as I like nice-but-very-dim Jennifer Garner, I didn’t really want to watch a universally panned film which had been mangled for 4:3 viewing on commercial flights. I wondered what the six channels the folks in the big seats had at the front of the plane.

I made it through two albums and my neighbour then turned to me and remarked that it was an awful film. Twice. Because I didn’t hear her the first time

And that was it. I spent the rest of the flight chatting with her. Call me an elitist snob (go on) but it was nice to speak to someone similarly educated to me. So I did the whole last-fifteen-years-in-five-hours thing. Hey, even 37signals got a mention.

My uncle picked me up at Ottawa airport – think Inverness airport times 4. Plus the usual interminable wait and interrogation through customs. Mind you, I liked answering the ‘who do you work for’ question that my customs guy asked me.