Stuck at Heathrow

We were inevitably late leaving Hamburg yesterday, following delays from Storm Dennis, but were glad to get away with only an hour's delay. We had a bumpy landing in the strong cross wind, but then were stuck on the taxiway for over an hour waiting for a slot. The pilot informed us that the Heathrow computer system was down, and no planes could leave or approach any gateway! We felt most sorry for the people who should have made connecting flights. The flight attendants were visiting their seats to give the best advice they could; the couple in front of us had been going to Chicago, but were told they would not get away today, and must go to the information desk for more news.

So we sat there, just looking at the rows of gates at Terminal 5, each filled with a BA plane but none of which were moving. When eventually they did clear a gate and we went through to baggage reclaim, it was more chaos. All the boards announcing which carousel the bags would come up on were blank, and we were all queuing to see a man with a mobile phone taking verbal instructions and writing down carousel numbers by hand! Departures were even worse: all the indicator boards were down, and the entry gates to security were not recognising the bar codes of the boarding passes. People were being checked in manually, and the gate numbers were being written up on white boards. The news says it was an IT glitch, but that does seem improbable, and we suspect it was a major hack into the system. But these days, conspiracy theories always sound more plausible than reality.

Bartok, our new guinea pig

Getting back home, Andre and Edwin had prepared a meal for us, which was very thoughtful and welcome. Also, they have bought a new guinea pig to replace Pilot (see Christmas 2019). He is called Bartók, continuing our theme of naming animals after famous poets or scientists, or - something new - composers. He is very tiny, only six weeks old, but loves cuddles and nestles up to us seemingly fearlessly.

My new paper, appropriately enough about galaxies in a journal called Galaxies, has brought two responses already from a Professor at Ohio state university, and another from a Professor of Astronomy at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. It is always a surprise to get messages from such distant places, but very welcome of course when they are so supportive. It must be dreadful to get massive amounts of attention from people who just spit vile and the hatred of envy at the fame of people in the spotlight, like unfortunate Love-Islander Caroline Flack. Much though it's nice to be recognised by a couple of academics, I would hate any fame with that degree of attention, and am glad to live a quiet anonymous life in gentle Hundon.