Here at my little hotel on the edge of the airport at Paris, I yet had another bad night's sleep, and I don't know why. Not that I'm complaining, of course, for being tired and falling asleep while crossing the Atlantic is the best way of passing the time that I can think of.

Another shower and a good breakfast with about half a dozen cups of coffee helped to restore my morale. And this is the first time ever that I've been asked for my voucher for breakfast from the Comfort Inn. It's a good job that I had one left over from a previous visit, that's all I can say.

And after a fruitless attempt to install Skype on my new little computer, it was time for me to wander off and wait for the shuttle bus for the ride back to the airport to find my plane.

I've plenty of photos of the hotel from my previous visits here so I won't bore you with another one but I've never shown you a photo of the shuttle bus before. This should keep you out of mischief for a while, then.

However I have warned you before about the fact that the hotel is right at the end of the runway. You don't need an alarm call if you go to sleep with the window open, that's for sure. At about 06:00 everything starts up at the airport and that is that for your beauty sleep.

It was of course at another Airport Hotel, the Hotelissimo Les Relais Bleus just down the road from here at Gonesse, where on 25th July 2000 the residents were awoken by a Concorde trying to fly in through an open window.

At the airport, check-in was pretty painless, just for a change. I'd switching my luggage around a little so that the camera bag went in the suitcase along with Strawberry Moose, the laptop and the Nikon D5000 went in the backpack and the rest of my butties (I still don't trust Air Transit) went into a plastic carrier bag scrounged from the hotel.

The luggage in the hold was still within the permitted limits, and of course, as the day goes on, the carrier bag will become emptier and emptier as I eat all of the food.

Now all that remains, apart from relaying all the drains is to run the gauntlet of what are laughingly called "Security Guards". Will I have another pervert this year wanting to grope me in places only the much-maligned Percy Penguin (who deosn't feature in these pages half as much as she deserves) is permitted.

On the other hand, Jenny Agutter or Kate Bush might have found a job as an airport security guard, in which case they would find me with more than my arms up as they searched me.

But before I leave my comfy little spec behind a pillar at the back of the check-in desks, a big thanks to the girl with the long fingernails sitting right behind me who succeeded in prising the security cover off a hidden power socket for me. Yes, I awarded her First Prise for that.

Passing through the "security guards" at the airport was relatively painless, simply because I was well-prepared.

1. I had put absolutely everything that was in my pockets into one pocket of my fleece, zipping it up and taking the fleece off to pass it and everything in the pocket through the X-ray machine on one of their little trays
2. I decided to go on the offensive. I made a fuss about having to take off my cap and my boots, asking the woman if she wanted me to take my underpants off as well. Then when the guy behind me, one of Moses's finest, was allowed to pass the security check with his headgear on, I really created a stink. I personally think that they were glad to get rid of me

Basically, now that my body is telling me that I'm old, I've decided that I'm not going to be a miserable old ghit like some, I'm going to be old and bad-tempered and crotchety and give everyone a hard time.

If anyone ever says anything, I'll blame it all on dementia. There will be plenty of witnesses to that - after all, people have been saying that for years that I'm demented.

Arriving at the departure gate, I can see that we've drawn the bus stop again. Clearly Air Transit can't afford to buy terminal space and they have parked their machine down amongst the weeds at the far end of the airport.

The economy class passengers will have to push the machine onto the tarmac ready for take-off and once in the air (if we ever make it that far) we will be delayed while we go crop-spraying, a little sideline that Air Transit has, in order to earn money for the fuel.

You may remember last night when I was telling you all about the dire consequences of taking a photograph at a restricted site such as an airport. And sure enough, as I unshipped the camera to take a photograph of our rusty steed, I was pounced upon by two airport security guards.

Apparently the Aeroport Charles de Gaulle is indeed a restricted site and photography on the concrete pan out here is strictly prohibited, even though you can see it on Google Maps from 200 metres up. Nice and polite though the security guards were, which always makes a change, but nevertheless quite intransigent.

It's all a load of nonsense if you ask me. I think that they probably didnt want a photo taken of the mechanics glueing the aeroplane back together again or chasing the livestock out of the interior.

However, Yours Truly is not as easily put off as all of that, and a crafty underarm shot when the security guards turned their backs showed you just how effective this airport security really is.

As I have said so many times before on so many different occasions, the only reason that there aren't more security "incidents" is that the "terrorists" can't be bothered to carry them out.

In Northern Ireland where the Republican terrorists are more determined, there's an "incident" every other day and the Security forces can't do too much about it. But then again, the Republican terrorists are white-skinned so no-one really minds too much.

Meanwhile, bringing yet another really good rant to a premature conclusion, you might be mistaken in thinking that our aeroplane to North America may well be an Airbus A330. However, appearances can be very deceptive.

It is actually an old BE2c from 1915, painstakingly reassembled last night after being shot down by the Baron von Richthofen on the Western Front in early 1917 and only recently rediscovered during road development work on the new by-pass around Cambrai. The Air Transit machine next to it, travelling to Calgary and which you can't unfortunately see in this photo, is Alcock and Brown's old Vickers Vimy, dug out of a bog in Ireland last week.

That does, of course, bring me quite nicely to the story that I heard about a school in the USA where a teacher once asked a pupil
"Who was first to fly the Atlantic non-stop?"
The pupil replied "Mike Tyson"
The teacher replied "actually, it was Alcock and Brown" to which the pupil retorted
"there you are! Mike Tyson!".

I was also reminded of a little story that I had heard about the unsuccessful Air Quebec's first 4-engined transatlantic flight.

Not the one where the Air Traffic Controller asked the pilot to "state your height and position" and the pilot replied "five foot nine, front seat",
but the one where the flight engineer called up the control tower at Dorval
"This is Air Quebec flight AQ449 from Paris to Montreal. Our Port Outer engine has ceased to function. We'll be half an hour late arriving at Dorval."
Ten minutes later, he called again. "This is Air Quebec flight AQ449 from Paris to Montreal. Our Starboard Outer engine has ceased to function. We'll be an hour late arriving at Dorval"
Ten minutes after that, we had "This is Air Quebec flight AQ449 from Paris to Montreal. Our Port Inner engine has ceased to function. We'll be two hours late arriving at Dorval"
The Air Traffic Controller turned to his shift leader "I hope that the Starboard Inner engine keeps going"
"Why's that?" asked the aforementioned
"Well, if that packs up, then Air Quebec flight AQ449 will be up there all night."

I always try to take a photo of the airport as we take off. It shows you the weather that I'm leaving behind me. It's always nice to compare this photo with one on arrival at Montreal to show you the difference. Somehow, the weather always seems to be better in Montreal.

And, ss I said just now, it makes a total mockery of this idea of not being able to take photos of the airport from the ground when you can take one just as well from 1000 feet up here. Who is kidding whom?

We hit the coastline ... "are you sure?" - ed ... a short while later, at the mouth of a rather wide river with plenty of buildings and industry along its banks. The only place that will fit the bill would seem to be Le Havre, meaning that we have been following the Seine out of Paris.

We don't seem to have made much height though - that's what is puzzling me. I was half-expecting us to have been at least 10,000 feet up by now and we are nothing like that.

No doubt about it - that can't really be anything else other than Le Havre and the Seine estuary down there. And it seemed to be confirmed when, just a few minutes later, we flew over some more land that I glimpsed through the gathering cloud, land which can be none other than the Contentin Peninsula.

It was round about here too that all of the hustle and bustle died down and I was able to check the in-flight entertainment. One of the films on offer was The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and I'd missed that when it did the rounds of the cinemas earlier in 2013. The title seemed to be especially symbolic and maybe a portent of things to come ... "which indeed it was" - ed ..., so I switched it on and settled myself down for the flight.

Air Transat is the Transatlantic equivalent of Ryanair as you can see. Apart from the meals and accompanying drinks, and use of the beichstuhl, almost everything else on the flight is payable. But then again, Air Transat's argument is that this is how the company can maintain its airfares at prices much lower than its competitors.

I for one don't have any objections with this approach. I'm quite content to bring a couple of butties and a packet of biscuits with me in my rucksack in case I get peckish during the flight.

Having said that, someone "official" reading this website is bound to go away and work out that my tomato and vegan cheese on nut-bread constitutes some kind of terrorist weapon that I can use to hi-jack an aircraft, and order my butties confiscated on my next transatlantic flight.

I am however surprised that Air Transat has not added the option of the private attention of the stewardesses for "personal sevices" during the flight. That would be one way to earn some extra money to pay the fuel bills. The company is very definitely missing out on a marketing opportunity with this.

The announcement for the duty-free service was in both English and French, and here lies a very curious circumstance. Anglophones do their on-board shopping at 35,000 feet whereas Francophones do theirs at 10,000 metres, which is of course just under 33,000 feet.

As if controlling an aeroplane isn't difficult and complicated enough without pilots having to manoeuvre all of the controls and bump the aeroplane up or down a couple of thousand feet depending upon who's got the credit card out.

I suppose that as far as Air Transat goes, it's what is called "multi-level marketing".

Talking of meals, which we were a little earlier, I am very sorry to Air Transat for my scepticism about the availability of my vegan meal. I had a lovely spicy beans and rice in tomato sauce and it was so nice that at the hotel later that evening I had to put the toilet roll in the fridge

The only time that I was really comfortable in the aeroplane was the 5 minutes that I spent on the elsan, but only a company like Air Transat can possibly do this. We have a full-length mirror in the beichstuhl so that you can see yourself riding the porcelain horse

My thought on this was that the purpose of the full length mirror in the toilet was so that you can see how you are doing. And if it's a two way mirror, then so can everyone else too.

However, my friend Rhys in South Carolina suggests that maybe Air Transat DOES offer the personal attention of the stewardesses to aspirant members of the "Mile-High Club", and then sells tickets to the rest of the passengers so that they can participate vicariously in the proceedings.

In fact, a camera in a suitable position to catch someone in flagrante delicto with a stewardess in the beichstuhl, a polite request for a pile of used oncers in a plain brown envelope in return for the negatives, and Air Transat would never again have to worry about the rising cost of fuel and increases in landing fees.

I tell you, "normal" in-flight entertainment has nothing on whatever Air Transat could offer if the company were really to put its mind to it.

By the way, if you would like more information as to what you might perceive to be criticism of Air Transat, there's a word or two of explanation on this page

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