Inside, with a good hour and a bit before boarding there was nothing for it but to head across to the Best of Tasmania store on the off chance they might have some of Stefano’s Sauvignon Blanc (they didn't), tap out the day's events (up to here) and depart for a nervous pee and a waltz through the news agent.
The regulation things you tend to do, in other words, while waiting in departure lounges.
There was a delayed flight bound for Melbourne also allocated to Gate Three, so our departure was delayed, but not enough to cause any difficulty in making the connecting flight in Brisbane. I’d polished off Clochemerle a couple of days earlier, and while Arnaldur Indriðason's latest effort (Strange Shores) isn’t exactly light-hearted reading, the Icelandic doom and gloom kept me occupied between Hobart and Brisbane and between Brisbane and Townsville once the seat belt sign had been extinguished.
The Brisbane stopover involved a switch of gates and an opportunity to wander off for a meditative Fat Yak, but was otherwise unremarkable, and we were on the ground in Townsville more or less on schedule, looking to establish contact with The Golfer and/or Miss Behaviour since one of them had promised to collect us from the airport.
It turned out The Golfer had drawn the short straw in that department as his sister had come down with the flu and was subsequently out of circulation. That meant dinner was a little later than some of would have preferred, but having been in a good paddock for most of the preceding fortnight the delay wasn’t really an issue.
It did, however, mean that by the time we’d finished, and Madam had toddled off to the cot some of us were forced to watch the end of the Indian innings in the final one dayer in Bangalore. I wandered off to bed as soon as the remarkable display of tonking reached its compulsory conclusion making a mental note to check whether Rohit Sharma (209 in 222 minutes off 158 with 12 sixes and 16 fours at a strike rate of 132.27) was someone we’d sighted in Cairns back in 2006.
As it turned out, he was.