Just read this story on the BBC News site.
  
At last Easyjet is going to allocate seats to passengers on its flights. Halleluiah say I.

I have just flown Easyjet (in fact I only wrote about the airline yesterday) to and from Barcelona with my family and my biggest gripe about the whole experience was the chaos over seat finding.

With young children, it is pretty important to end up with seats together; if your kids are over five though, you, and they, would end up in the general free for all at the departure gate (until today’s announcement).

My daughter turned five in June.  

My experience in August is that people behave badly and show their worst traits when it comes to the rush for seats. My wife and kids barged out of the way by over-eager passengers and all manner of pushing-in and queue jumping. That treatment doesn’t bring out the best in me and I will/did react badly to it. 

I am sure that Easyjet would rather avoid its passengers arguing with each other before a flight is even boarded.  
 
At Luton Airport on the 19th August, stood up in the hot holding pen at the departure gate for over an hour, I made an observation to Mrs Baldwin that travelling by Virgin Rail was EASIER and more organised and comfortable (with particular reference to seating) – and this was not a great reflection on the orange airline. 
 
Next time we fly though – maybe it will all be a lot better.

I generally dislike politics and generally distrust politicians and as such you will not find me writing about political matters very often. However, Cameron’s cabinet reshuffle has generated a little piece of news that I enjoyed for a change. Here’s an extract from a BBC News piece:

"Mr Clarke takes a lesser role as minister without portfolio in the Cabinet Office, where he will act as a government "wise head" offering advice to Mr Cameron on issues including economic strategy.

He has been replaced (as Justice Minister) by employment minister Chris Grayling, who was shadow home secretary before the 2010 election and is regarded as being to the right of Mr Clarke on justice issues. 
 
Mr Clarke denied the move was a humiliation and he was "pleasantly surprised" to remain in cabinet.

He added: "At my age you do occasionally have to step down from a heavy departmental role before you
suddenly realise you can no longer quite handle it."

I have to state that I warm to Ken Clarke; I like the fact that he is grateful for what he has, as opposed to angry about what he hasn’t. His honesty is refreshing and some of those now occupying the loftier cabinet roles could learn from it. It may be spin of course, politicians are masters at this, but in Ken Clarke’s case I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and even respect him for it. 

Now that’s a revelation and worth a blog post.

The Baldwin family summer holiday was spent in Spain this year and we were couriered to Barcelona and back by Easyjet. Whilst there is much that I could write about the experience of flying by orange (and not all of it good), I’ll limit my comments to some wry observation about Easyjet and its fundraising priorities.

I noticed on both legs of the journey that only after the cabin crew trolley dollies had tried to sell the passengers food and beverages (the first cart), gifts/ tobacco/fragrances (separate cart), scratch cards and then onward travel cards did the possibility of donating money to UNICEF become a priority (and not that long before the flights were due to land).

Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the airline for raising money for UNICEF but what made me reflect was that it was only after Easyjet had relieved its passengers of as many pounds and euros as it could, did the subject of charity come up. Being cynical, by this point, all that the charity would benefit from was the loose change of the passengers. My view was that perhaps the charity would do better if Easyjet contributed something from every purchase made by passengers during the flight – that would amount to more than loose change but of course it would also impact profits.

I am perhaps being uncharitable as well as cynical! At least I slung into the collection all the euro coins that remained on my person – many others were obviously ‘spent up’.

Whilst on holiday during August, I read a number of books and can particularly recommend Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels, of which I read two. I also read 'Fifty Shades of Grey' and have to be honest in my summing up – it was fifty shades of crap in my opinion. 

I’ll freely admit that in being a bloke, I am not the‘target market’ for E.L. James’ erotic thriller but I persevered through the volume in the main to understand what all the fuss and hype was about.

Let me sum up – young virgin Anastasia Steele (AS) meets handsome billionaire businessman, Christian Grey (CG) who has a penchant for S&M sex and the obligatory big willy. AS has an orgasm on every single occasion they bonk, which is regularly, and AS goes from virginity to seriously contemplating becoming a contracted submissive to the dominant CG and to being exposed to a broad range of more ‘niche’ (to put it politely) sexual practices. 
 
All fairy tale trash/nonsense and about as believable as Toy Story (though less engaging).

In fact the author sums up her own work in two sentences in chapter 21 page 368, paragraph three, lines one & two:

“I am adrift from reality. I’m in this fantasy apartment, having fantasy sex with my fantasy boyfriend..."

To make the read even less rewarding E. L. James’ is annoyingly repetitive in her use of ‘Oh my’ and ‘Crap’ and ‘Holy cow and holy crap’ (which to be fair when considered in conjunction are a pretty good way to review the entire book). I read ‘Oh my’ so many times that the book will forever be associated with the Wizard of Oz (another fairy tale) in my head – lions and tigers and bears oh my, lions and tigers and bears.

Is this book the ‘marriage saviour’ that has been bandied around in the media or the herald to a new era of sexual liberation? Somehow I doubt it - if you are a bloke whose wife felt more randy as a result of reading the book then I am very pleased for you. In my house, no such dizzy heights were reached, Mrs Baldwin and I were however able to agree that better literature could be found on the back of a cereal packet.

Reading the book made me wonder what kind of person wrote it and to be honest I had some uncharitable opinions. 
 
However I read a much more interesting piece in the Guardian Magazine this weekend as a result of an interview with E.L. James’ husband – Niall Leonard. It turns out that the middle-aged couple are not that unlike my wife and me with their kids and their ‘normal’ lives. They have been blown away by the huge success of the trilogy but have their collective feet firmly rooted in reality. Read the article; Niall is amusing, honest and down to earth.    
 
Back to the Philip Kerr if I may – one of the Bernie Gunther novels is called Field Grey and it is an excellent read – if you need something grey, my advice, and specifically aimed at the fellas is; ignore ‘fifty shades’ and go for ‘field’ instead. Don’t stop your female partner from reading though because you never know what good might come of it.