Comedians often take great fodder from plane travel, the food, the rituals of getting on, off, from and to the airport and the primal state that people seem to return to when confined within tin for long hours, Seinfeld made a career out of it.
If I thought it would illuminate matters in anyway then so would I.
Part of me had been dreading the flight. The length mainly. In the weeks before hand I'd been talking about the duration of the flight like a war story with my work collegues, “Flying to Spain? Pah, this is nearly 24 hours baby, you don't know nothing”. When I flew over a year ago, I had the luxury of a weeks break between flights in Abu Dhabi with Bec and Ryan, this time I was flying right through.
Russ and I stayed at the Yotel at Heathrow the night before, partially because I love the showers and partially because it means that we don't have to get up ridiculously early in order to catch public transport to the airport. I'm an over prepared traveller, if they tell you to get there 3 hours before travel then I get there 4 just in case. The day that I don't, I'm convinced that there will be some major disaster preventing me from getting to the airport and making me miss the plane.
It helps with feeling somewhat rested before embarking upon a journey the Yotel does. I think I've waxed lyrical about the monsoon showers there before. This time when we tried the shower we found it wasn't draining as fast as it should and it was slightly flooding the bathroom, I was too tired to change rooms at this point so we just put up with it, a little bit of shower then turn it off to let it drain then a little bit of shower and then off to let it drain. We mentioned it to the desk clerk the next morning and to the credit of Yotel they emailed me about a week after I arrived here, offering me a free night in the Yotel when I get back to make up for it which was lovely. Yayy Yotel. Any how, back to the plane.
My one consolation on long plane flights is the chance to watch lots of movies, lots and lots and lots of movies. I have books and things to write in also but when I'm tired and cant sleep, what I want is movies. We took off and I settled into the flight, waiting with anticipation for them to turn on the entertainment system, flicking through the inflight mag to find out what they'd be showing.
For some reason, some peoples screens came on and others didn't. Mine was not one of the lucky ones, it looked like the system was being reloaded. Again some screens came on and others didn't though this time you could watch a movie, it was only one in English, The Time Travellers Wife, not the best thing to watch after you've just said goodbye to your boyfriend for a month. After about 10 mins, it seemed as though the movie was restarted again and I went through the same bit of the movie again feeling somewhat less emotional. Then again, and again. Suffice to say I have seen the first 10 mins of the time travellers wife 8 times. Its not bad, but it took me about 3 hours to get to the end of it. There was an announcement after the third restart informing us that we were experiencing some problems with the entertainment system (gasp!) and that the cabin crew were endeavouring to resolve the issue with the vendor on the ground. They were sure that it would be fixed soon but alas it was not. Seven hours. And I was a bit too tired to read the whole time so my only option was to play, 'what's this movie about anyway?' A spontaneous game I invented which basically involves watching movies over dubbed in foreign languages and trying to work out what they're about. There are no subtitles, basically you have to guess and lip read quickly. The movie was “Adam” with Rose Byrne, about a guy with Aspergers who falls in love with the aforementioned Rose. Its better in English, it loses something in the German overdub, everyone seems angry.
The seven hour plane ride is nothing, its the subsequent 14 hour flight that's the killer if the entertainment wasn't on that flight I think I would have turned back. I had 2 hours in transit at Abu Dhabi before getting on the second plane, a bit of a walk and some duty free shopping to occupy myself. Some random chat with a fellow traveller, a woman in her sixties who had come from Croatia, she lived in Geelong and wore black after the untimely death of her son some years before. She carried a brown coat given to her by some relatives in Croatia to protect her against the sudden cold we'd had before we left. She was angry that it wasn't black and was planning on getting rid of it as soon as she got home. She wore black so no one would forget her son, even after many years. It seemed both sad and noble.
14 hours, first thing I did was check the entertainment system and it worked!
I watched the Adam movie in English this time and a bunch of other things that provided distraction rather than entertainment. Crossing Australia seemed to take forever, we came in just over the bottom half of West Australia and cut across the great Australian bight. Everytime I looked at the map charting the plane's course we seemed no closer than before. We came in for the approach and the panic that comes from being cooped up set in “Where's the runway, I don't see the runway!” The last ounce of rationality in me summoned up a counter voice that said “It doesn't matter if you cant see the runway, as long as the pilot can then its ok”. God bless that voice. We landed without incident and then had to sit around for about 20 mins as someone had taken our gate at the airport. If we could have we would have used the emergency slides, anything to get out.
Australia is the only country where I have to fill out paperwork to get in. Everyone scrambled for pens to complete boarding cards and run the maze to get through passport control and customs. With the new passports they're issuing now you can go through these smart gate things that use face recognition software to check that you are who you say you are. I felt a little like I was being probed to be honest with you, and not in a good way. I got through customs relatively unmolested and came out the little arrivals doors feeling a little exposed to the world. Everyone lines up out the front of those doors pouring over everyone who walks through them and if you aren't who they're waiting for often times they look distinctly disappointed with you, after a long flight its hard not to take that personally. The kids made up for it though, little choruses when they saw me, they'd all gotten so tall. Jack has taken to growing his hair so now he has a little blonde mop happening. Having gone to his school concert and seeing all the other kids it seems to be a trend, I must be getting old.
In my next installment: Curtain twitching and country living.
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