In departures

9.30am. As I stood regarding the boards, a member of airport staff came up to me and asked if I needed any help. I explained that the board showed my flight but that check-in didn't open for a while. He said that I should join the queue now if I wanted to.

Although the queue was long, it moved quickly, aided by a short woman in sensible shoes and a very loud voice, shouting at people to move to a particular check-in desk.

So I am already checked in, through security and I'm now sitting in the departure lounge. I've never travelled with my laptop before so I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was completely routine. They scanned the laptop through the X-ray, then it was scanned with something else, a chemical 'sniffer' test I guess (I suppose for any dodgy chemicals) by hand. I also had to take my shoes off too, as they have metal toe-caps. As always it tTook me about ten minutes to get dressed and reassembled! I really must try and pack less about my person.

I haven't seen anybody I know yet, but it's quite hard to match faces when you've never met them and you've only seen their pictures online. It's absolutely boiling hot in this departure lounge, I can tell you that for nothing.

Despite checking in as early as I did, I was not the first. My boarding card shows sequence number 6. I wonder if any of my lot were ahead of me. I suppose anybody who checked in online might have numbers ahead of me.

I had a good wander around the departures lounge, but there wasn't much to do. I bought a bottle of water from WHSmiths, looked in the bookshop (contemplated buying 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' but decided against it), looked in the window of a whisky shop, bought a camp Royal Crown keyring from the Harrods concession at the other end of the departure lounge, and listened to my MP3 player for a good while. I can only get one radio station on my MP3 player, and it wasn't BBC Radio 4, so in the end, I listened to some Dirk Gently.

More later, my laptop battery is running low, and I can't see a power socket anywhere.