Thanks to Wordpress's delayed publishing feature, I'll be in the air when this post goes up. I'm also trying out a "send to Facebook" plugin which should automatically put posts onto my Facebook page as soon as they are published. If your Facebook has gone all wrong as a result of this I apologise profusely!Radically I've started getting my GVs (general views) of the Arena da Amazonia in Manaus today BEFORE arriving there. Rather than actually travelling to Brazil I've elected to do all my GV coverage using Google Streetview which seems to have done it already. What a time saver! Seriously though, this is very useful stuff - getting a detailed internal view of the stadiums before getting there is valuable to help with orientation, understanding what the shooting positions might be like and so on. I can see where the entry to the pitch is in relation to the dugouts, how close the crowd is etc etc.If you haven't done so yet, it's worth looking at the Google site with all the World Cup stuff on it. You'll see the stadium list on the left of that page, click on one of them and in you go. As you can see in the screen grab above, I'm hoping that they put a few more LAN cables in than that otherwise we're in trouble! Last night Focus Images MD Daniel Hambury and I had a planning meeting to go through as much of the itinerary and approach to the tournament as possible. Dan was just back from Miami where he shot the England pre-tournament training matches, getting nicely sunburnt in the process. It's pretty clear from the blanket coverage of those games plus the massive amount of page space being devoted to everything England that it's going to be hugely competitive from a photographic standpoint in Brazil. OK - I knew this already but it is interesting to see how things are unfolding in reality.We pretty much agreed that the demand for places at the final is going to be so huge that getting a spot will be extremely fortunate for us. On the positive side though, the opening game is often a good indicator of how busy things will be and there are 202 photographers accredited for pitchside access  and 77 in the "tribune" i.e. up in the stands for that match which is fewer than I thought that there would be. Aside from blanket coverage of the England games, the final is the key target for us so we remain hopeful with fingers and toes crossed, but prepared in case we don't get in. We also took the opportunity for an era-defining selfie as Focus Images goes from strength to strength, with coverage this year of all domestic and many internationals in both football and rugby, the All Blacks v England rugby tour, Tour de France, the Champions League Final and now the World Cup.Incidentally the above shot was with a tripod-mounted Sony A7R and Leica Summarit M 50 2.5, a rather fantastic combination. I also re-checked the luggage criteria for TAM airlines and they allow 2 pieces of hand luggage! A normal carry-on size bag and a "personal item" like a briefcase or laptop bag. This is excellent news, so I'll offload some gear from the Peli and my new Domke "wanker jacket" into a laptop bag that I've got which should make things a lot easier. I'll write more once I'm at the airport. Malaria tablets are also being ingested. The recommendation is to start 2 days before arrival in the at-risk area, and keep going 4 days afterwards. As it's only the Amazon area which is at risk I don't need too many of these very expensive pills (£4 each!). Hopefully the mozzies are benign in Rio.On to Terminal 1 at Heathrow where some sly work with the 400mm (thanks for the idea Melanie) resulted in my hand luggage being approved. A huge relief, only 11 more flights or more to go. What an excellent result. All I need to do now is keep the TAM baggage tag on there for the next 5 weeks. A lengthy tearful goodbye to Mrs T followed and that was me through security into the shopping hell that is a BAA airport.

I'm travelling as light as possible but still have too much stuff. Its hard to work out what I could get rid of in all honesty. Anyhow we'll see what happens as the weeks progress. I foresee a DHL parcel with unused kit heading back to the UK after a week.Ahead lies twelve hours of monotony (ear plugs are with me, and please don't let that screaming child sit anywhere near me) and a massive overdose of Breaking Bad, followed by seven hours of hanging around at Rio airport, then another 3 hours to Manaus.