Brain Busting

Funny how, when flying to Canada, you would assume you'd fly west. Wouldn't you? Well I did. The flight was scheduled to be 9.5 hours long, and I had already been taxing my grey matter trying to get to grips with that eternally difficult concept (at least for me) of time differences. Having just about grasped that we'd be heading back in time, arriving 8 hours behind (or just an hour and a half after take off), along comes another concept to frazzle my already exhausted brain. Having switched on the on-board info map I was astonished to see that we wouldn't be flying west at all! The flight path was in fact set for due north! This would mean flying up through Scotland and over the top of the world, crossing Greenland and the Canadian Arctic en route, before dropping south again to arrive in Vancouver. So how does that work then, as far as the time differences goes? Imagining the world to be rather like an orange, with the time zones like segments that join at the poles, so then instead of gradually losing an hour at a time, we would presumably stay on BST right until we reach the North Pole and then suddenly .... whoosh, back in time to relive the same 4 or so hours all over again. I say 'live', that would be stretching a point somewhat. Long haul flights are never much fun but with a not very appealing (albeit extensive) selection of films and a less than impressive sound system, a strange interpretation of a chicken roast dinner for breakfast and temperature controls that range from blowing a gale to stifling, the best thing to do seems to be to sleep. Maybe that will mean I'm awake enough to hit downtown Vancouver running later. That is of course after they give us breakfast for lunch!  Confused? Me too.