After a 9 hour flight or 540 minutes, you’d maybe expect to have another hour of waiting about before getting out of the airport, but not in Atlanta. Here you have to wait a good hour in the queue for immigration and in fact the queue for US citizens was just as long as it was for us foreigners.

Then you get to collect you baggage and clear customs - this was the easy piece, after such a long wait for immigration my bag must have been around the baggage reclaim belt 50 times.

Once through customs, you have to recheck your baggage - yes that’s right folks, recheck your baggage and go through security again. This seems ridiculous to me but it’s because you have to reenter a secure area to get the train to the terminal.

The train took only a couple of minutes but I knew I’d have to wait around at the other end for my bag. So I joined the queue for Avis hire cars, which took about a further 20 minutes. By which time my bag still hadn’t arrived.

After it did finally turn up on the baggage belt, it had been 153 minutes or over 2.5 hours since we’d got off the plane. That’s 28% of the total flying time from London to Atlanta in the first place. People always complain about London Heathrow, but it’s a walk in the park compared to here.

For those of you that know me, these aren’t words you’d normally hear me use….but that day has come!

I’m annoyed with them for one reason, support! I have a Power Mac G5 with an Apple USB Mouse. The scroll wheel has given up the ghost - after a year or so. Normally I wouldn’t worry about this, in fact I’d just go and buy another one.

But I bought a 3 year Apple Care warranty, which covers the mouse. So I thought, hey I’ll get some value for money. So off I go to Apple support website to discover the only way I can do this is if I take the mouse to an Apple Store (or a service partner).

Now my nearest Apple Store or Authorised Service partner is a minimum of a 50 mile round trip, so the cost in fuel & parking, not forgetting my valuable time will far exceed the cost of a new mouse.

So I’m annoyed - if only for a short while - with my good friends at Apple!!! Why cover the mouse under this agreement if I can’t just call somebody and say my mouse is broken, send me a new one? That’s what you do in the USA and I know for sure it’s what Dell do in the UK. Grrrrrrr!

I’m off for a cuppa and to order my new mouse (from Apple I suspect).

I took this photo in Lille this morning and after playing around in photoshop (I’m still learning) I’ve managed to create something I think looks ok - what do you think?

Check out the table & chairs for sale - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=190204064477&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=009

…..and I got 96% - so I must try harder for the next one!