September | 2021 | Shannon Fennell's Blog

First chance to post here. Taking a day to chill and just rest finally. Just me and the dog in the house today.

Last Thursday (Aug 26th) I left Canada, and headed off to the airport to fly to the UK. It was a long term (6 year) plan which had been delayed along the way due to life events. I decided I wasn’t going to delay it any longer! I figured trying to wait the Pandemic out was going to take longer than I wanted to wait.

I had to take a flight with one layover due to changing my departure date and not being able to get the direct flight for the date I wanted to leave. That made the trip a lot longer – 11.5 vs 6.5 hours! And to top that off, we had an over two hour delay in Montreal! The agent announced the delay and told us it was because the plane had been upgraded and the assigned crew was not qualified on the new equipment, so they had to call up a crew and fly them there from Toronto! So the flight ended up being close to 14 hours. Add in the early arrival at the airport, and the queues at Heathrow, the trip took 18.5 or so hours in total to exit the airport on arrival.

I was able to upgrade to Business Class – they had a “sale” on the upgrade. I was happy to pay to be further away from people who were removing their masks to eat and drink! I was triple masked from the time I left home until I was in the parking lot at Heathrow, did NOT remove it at all. So no eating OR drinking until I guzzled a 1500ml bottle of water once we got to the car. I managed to get around 4 hours of sleep on the flight which was great, I felt like I’d had a night’s sleep and was functioning normally. Even woke up the next morning at my normal time of 5 a.m. (in local time!)

I am shocked by the lack of masks over here. No wonder the UK numbers of new cases is skyrocketing. Makes me very nervous. I will, of course, continue to wear masks when I go out anywhere. Which hopefully will be next week!

I’m in quarantine as I flew the Thursday before they announced Canada was moved to the Green List as of Monday, August 30th. So annoyed! I’m at home for 10 days, and have to do a test on Day 2 and Day 8. I haven’t received my results for my Day 2 test yet, and tomorrow is my Day 8. Which I’m a little concerned about. Had to be mailed and my day 2 was a Sunday, and the Monday was a Bank Holiday here… so I’m assuming it was delayed. I can’t leave the house so it was dropped off to be mailed by someone else.

I’m still working my way through all the notifications and address changes – the less important ones, got the important ones done before I left. Have forms that I need to submit to both the Canadian government and financial institutions regarding my residency for tax purposes.

I don’t have a long term plan for this… I’m planning to go where the wind and my whims take me. So more school, work, adventure, moves… who knows, really. It is all going to depend on what is possible to do in this new reality the world is in.