Well hello dear reader and welcome aboard to the very first installment of what I am sure will be a plethora of pictures of food. Some hilarity. And me being too hot. And complaining about it. A lot.

Well lets kick off with the story so far.

Actually managed to leave the office yesterday at a reasonable time, Hurrah.

Then it was straight in to the holiday traffic at the M4 M5 interchange and to make my way up to Fiona & Sarahs. Only stopping briefly to partake of a vanilla latte. Well I am on holiday. And a piece of shortbread. Well I am weak-willed.

In actual fact the drive up to FIona & Sarah's wasn't quite as hideous as I'd imagined it could be. And before you could say Cabin Crew take your seats for landing - I was tucking in to delicious sheperd's pie. Well, I was after I'd had a good nose around their new garden. It's beautiful. And the torrential rain couldn't couldn't flatten it. Well it could, and indeed did. But you get my drift.

Then was the hilarity of packing - well Fiona and Sarah packing that is. Mine was done. Let's just say it was nearly midnight when we went to bed. (in fairness FIona was printing out boarding passes, car parking information and updating her car hire profile).

Alarm call was 5am for a 6am Pear Tree departure. And we left bang on time. Unsurprisingly the M6 isn't chocker block at that time in the morning so before we knew it we were in the multi storey (level 3 by the lifts, in case of emergency) unloading our case collection. American Airlines check in is handily also just by the lifts, so after Fiona had popped for some luggage tags for their new suitcases, we were dropping bags off. Hmm Security is very tight today. We were questioned in the usual way but with a different edge. "Who packed your bags?", "how long have you had the case?". Then minor fracas for me - as I have a floppy case I had to take it myself to a different bag drop. Literally WTF? Something to do with my handles jamming the machinery. More like make my life difficult I'd say.

So with Sarah and Fiona hot-footing it to the Celebrity Twiglet Lounge - I went to take the air and confirm to Anthea that all was going according to plan. And then went to join them in the Twiglet Lounge. We seemed to have loads of time, so were chatting, charging our electronic devices and generally tucking in to branflakes, museli, fruit, croissant and latte - suddenly - boarding in 15 minutes! Oh my Christ. We'd not had chance to go to Duty Free and spray ourselves with fragrances until we get migraines. In fairness we did have time to have a quick butchers.

So now we're 3/4 of the way in to the flight and you join me in seat 7G on wireless keyboard and connected iphone combo. It's vg. Also listening to musics through the best headphones EVER. I am going to seriously consider this noise cancelling shizzle. It's great.

So entertainment wise I've watched Insurgent on the tablet thingumybob they hand around. And lunch was a v delicious Beef Tenderloin (choice was in real life 'chicken or beef'), And what I can only describe as not a diet ice-cream sundae for dessert.

Ooh. Forgot to mention just after take off we all did our Joan Collins - and changed in to more comfy travelling clothes. Well I'm wearing chinos and will look like an unmade bed on landing if I hadn't changed. I'd forgotten how tiny those plane toilet cubicles are. Right it's currently 1450BST and 0850 in Chicago. So that's a couple of hours until touchdown and the inevitable hilarity of what will prove to be immigration. Going off in search of a cup of tea. Am literally Hugh Grant. More soon.