h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I get my flights as cheap as I can. I'm not into paying extra for your executive lounge malarkey. Oh yes, 50 quid extra might get you no screaming kids kicking at the Bob the Builder 20p-a-ride tractor. 50 quid extra might get you plush leather executive seats. 50 quid extra might get you air-con and a packet of crisps. 50 quid extra might even get you an unlimited supply of executive beer from the executive fridge.

But none of this is any use if you have to pay for your internet connection. If I'm going to have to wait around for a plane, I'd rather be doing something useful. Something like checking my email... or my hootoo messages... or, more likely, my 173 Autosport RSS messages and 284 Jobserve RSSes (most of which are for ridiculously irrelevant vacancies like Dutch speaking infrastructure specialists in the Netherlands. But I digress.)

You see, in the executive lounge your 50 quid extra also gets you WiFi internet access. But it's BT Openzone and it's going to cost you extra. Of course, you're an executive, so you can afford it. You've probably got a company account. At the very least you'll be putting it on your Amex and claiming it back on company expenses.

Back with the plebs in the public lounges (where the kids are screaming, Bob is asking once a minute "Can we fix it?", and the kids are clearly wondering "Can we break it?") Jersey Telecom have cleverly installed a free WiFi hotspot. Great for zipping through your RSS backlog (if only to delete all those unwanted European computer techy situations vacant).

But back in the executive lounge, you can't get access to your free JT hotspot. You're sitting in your increasingly uncomfortable leather executive seats, having to keep your jacket on because the executive air-con is a bit over enthusiastic, getting greasy finger marks over the keyboard from your executive packet of crisps that you wouldn't've eaten normally but they were there and free and so you had to get your money's worth, and wondering whether to start on the executive beer. And who needs the internet when you can read the complimentary copy of the Financial Times anyway?

So, spare a though for me today in the executive lounge through no fault of my own, (having been upgraded) having to write this journal offline and post it later when I can get a hit on some other WiFi link, most likely off of my own broadband connection at home.

That'll teach me for leaving it till the last minute to change my flight home.

Paff