So it’s seven thirty in the morning here in LA and three thirty in the afternoon back in London town. In timekeeping terms I’m in that hazy in-between where clocks tell you that you’re supposed to be meeting someone or falling asleep or eating, and you have absolutely no objections to doing whichever of these things it might be, but also no instinct to tell you which of them is appropriate.

And what am I doing posting this buffoonish tripe? I’m waiting for the sports shop around the corner to open so I can go buy a pair of running shoes and use the gym. Someone on my flight told me it was a superb way to deal with jetland, and I reckon it may at least offset the gorgeous American burgers I will inevitably scoff in the brief hours I’m here. Somehow or other (actually, it’s the ludicrous quantity of sugar they put in the buns) American hamburgers are always better than ours.

Oh, yes, the flight…

I’m not keen on flying. I accept that it’s irrational, but I just get scared. I fly anyway, but its not a joyful thing for me. Although yesterday’s flight was something like eleven hours and I stopped being nervous around the third one and was so bored by the seventh that I actually watched a sequence in a movie where someone jumps out of a plane and didn’t shudder.

The whole experience, incidentally, was very French. I was flying Air France, so you’d expect it to be, but I hadn’t imagined the ways in which it would be French. First up, they nearly left me behind. The hospitality lounge were being so nice to me that they forgot to tell me when the flight was called. They kept saying everything was fine, and finally, because I am a nervous maniac, and feeling a bit rude for rushing off, I went to the gate anyway. The gate staff waved at me urgently to get over here and could not understand how I’d ignored so many ‘last call’ announcements…

But that was the only bad bit. The rest was just hilarious, in a good way.

I got to my seat and a tall, elegant man in flight crew uniform told me quietly that it was the best seat. It was absolutely the best, with a fine view of the aisle. The cabin crew on this side of the plane were better than the other side. Also, he personally could attest to the freshness of the blankets for my row, having set them out himself. But I should not tell anyone, lest they become envious.

Then the food. Oh, my. Pay close attention, other airlines. Air France has shattered you into a thousand pieces and swept up the remains to use as sand in the bottom of an ornamental fishtank in Marseilles. I’m not saying it was great like great in a restaurant in Paris, but it was the best plane food I’ve ever had. Although not even their on-board chef could make crisps stay crispy under a cover.

The entertainment system fritzed out, and I honestly thought the head purser would offer to sing. She looked as if she might have a decent repertoir of jazz, actually, but we’d probably have had to feed her some of the champagne they dished out to say ‘sorry’ in order to get her started. I had a portable DVD player with me and they were all for organising a screening for the whole of my section before the system cranked itself back up again and all was well…

Anyway – out of time. More anon.