As a kid, sport wasn’t really represented in the realm of family activities. My dad not really the sport guy (must be genetic), except for Judo, which is not exactly your ideal father-son bonding sport. The occasional quality time was therefore spent mostly on two things: lego and train models.

Lego was the passion of my life, my only career inspiration at the time, still would be, if not for these damn high school orientation counselors.

Train models and all these cute little house models that go around, were my dad’s real interest, in true british fireplace&slippers fashion…

Unfortunately, far too frequent travels and moves always stood in the way of his grand project to turn one of the room in the decrepit family manor into a morsel of bucolic alpine landscape, complete with countryside train stations, small river flowing in the middle and of course, the perfunctory tunnel through the mountain.

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A few essential lessons learnt the hard way about getting on a short-distance European flight from London. Placed here for the benefit of those who might suffer from the same level of brain-cell degeneration and lack of common sense as yours truly.

• Obvious Point #1 Booking the last flight of the day, out of a dead-end airport is not a good idea.
• Obvious Point #2 Putting any trust in the airline claim that said airport is “within 30 minute reach of central London” is even less of a good idea.
• Obvious Point #3 Not factoring in a heavy Murphy coefficient when calculating the estimated time required by the journey to the airport, is a downright asinine idea.

Anyway, you get the picture…

This is the first time I miss a plane. ever. Well, except for last year, when I misread the day on my ticket and missed my plane by a full 24 hours.

This one was the first I could actually hear taking off from my arriving shuttle bus…

Damn, Robert Doisneau and now Richard Avedon (others too)… Bad year for photography.

Then again, neither could be said to have been cut in their primes, but it’s a loss all the same.

You know you are getting old when you start spotting familiar names in first page obituaries every other day…

Despite my past as a nazi war criminal, my many arrests for international drug trafficking and convictions on multiple counts of felonies in more than 13 US states, the Japanese consulate just granted my new visa without so much as a personal interview.

I tell you, they really do let anybody in, these days.