• Arrival in Manchester: Our luggage came last, natch.
  
• Walked through customs to her mum & dad holding a "Dr Sugar Spun" sign. She was thrilled.
  
• Her mum & dad tell me to call them by first name.
  
• Drove to Liverpool, I spoke little
  
• Met her brother and talked with him.
  
• Managed to eat mum's cooking and now understand first-hand what Ramsay has been bitching about (e.g., broccoli cooked to within 30 seconds of falling apart into soup)
  
• Showed her dad how to tame a Weißbier when pouring it
  
• Shopping: epic collection of Pot Noodle and other necessities
  
• Exceedingly epic win at gran's. I need a haircut.
  
• Failure of bedroom converted to a win
  
• Trip into city for RIG's shopping survived, waited in pub, had a pint and watched half an hour of Papua New Guinea beating England in Teh Rugby.
  
• RIG and mum leave me alone with dad and bro to go back to gran knowing I'm a dead man and giddy at the thought. Her dad invites me out for a pint.
  
• We have two pints in the far-away-but-nice pub. Her "non-talkative" father talks with me the whole time.
  
• Out with her just-as-unpunctual-as-her friends who are friendly.
  
• RIG's friends fail to grill me into oblivion, waiting instead for me to go out for a smoke to grill her about me.
  
• We fuck off to a pub where they again grill her outside of my presence.
  
• Too much luggage: mum can't fit in the car and so does the tearful goodbye from the driveway. Refers again to my return despite RIG's previous admonishment that she hasn't yet invited me back.
  
• Back to the airport after a quick stop at Morrison's for cheese and Quorn veggie stuff.
  
• In MAN security I pass right through, RIG gets the full pat-down.
  
• Despite a weekend of epic wins, I manage not to be too smug for the entire trip home. Nevertheless enough smugnitude got through that RIG announced that there will be a Reckoning.
  

Traveler's Tips:

SwissAir is pretty good although you usually have to connect through some airport or another in the home country. Zurich (ZRH) is pretty good, a typical modern airport mall; Basel (BSL) is a fucking wasteland with no smoker's area and nothing resembling food. Avoid the latter.

SwissAir also offers beer and wine and sandwiches on flights between Switzerlandia and the UK, all for no additional charge.

ABSOLUT EPIC FAIL
Absolut has a new flavour available in Switzerlandia (we won't see it here in Deutchlandia for a few more years): Mango. I snagged two bottles at duty-free. Back in Munich I was severely warned not to take a taste in the S-Bahn but to wait until we got home. RIG can be awfully convincing.

The shit smells and tastes more like durian, and rotten durian at that. After the most excellent peach, pears and grapefruit varieties, Absolut really screwed up.

RIG continues to sulk, her friends having all gone for her throat rather than mine. I'm just waiting to find out what they actually said about me so tell me already, dammit, because I know you're reading this, sugar_spun!