Friday 4 March 2016

Australia (Part One)

Heathrow Airport

Is like every shit shopping centre you’ve ever been in, all put together, but no one is allowed to leave, so there’s a frantic air – a mix of stress and boredom.  And no one is there just to hang about but all anyone is doing is just hanging about.  Also, everything costs more.

We’re excited, mind, so we start drinking pretty much straight away.  What’s to stress about for us?  Holidays, yo.

The most exciting thing that happens on this leg of the journey is racing through the airport in an excitable attempt to prove that the travellator walkway things they have in airports are a dismal waste of energy.  (1)
Hong Kong Airport

Grey. Very very grey.  A combination of dreech and smog.  Drog.  (2)  (3)

There were some screaming children on the plane.  Their parents took a relaxed approach, deciding to do absolutely shit all about it, having apparently tuned out this uniquely distressing sound.  So, the polite and mild-mannered passengers sat back and tried to enjoy the ride by imagining all the ways those children’s dreams might go unfulfilled.  A couple of other young passengers enjoyed their flight by kicking our seatbacks, which is a brilliant game.  Hahaha, very funny, kids.  You’ll die alone.

Taking off in a plane is brilliant fun, I don’t care what anyone says (4).  Airports are fucking awful, though; the logical conclusion of late capitalism: an enclosed space, offering the very worst products at high prices, in an air-free, misery-rich environment, advertised with the wildly fanciful notion that it could be a destination in itself. 

Sydney

The Hong-Kong-Sydney flight had only one errant child, a baby that screamed like he was having a baby during the landing.  It was strange and jarring, a really difficult noise to bear.  The boychild had hitherto been mercifully quiet.  I fleetingly hoped that whatever was troubling the poor mite would quickly kill him.  Fleetingly, mark you.

We touched down and could hardly get our shoes on; our feet, ankles and calves have swollen beyond recognition.  A mild case of DVT, presumably.  That’s what happens in pleb class.  (5)

It’s 8.30 AM on a Monday and we’ve been up for 48 hours.  (6)  It’s already pretty warm.  The lack of cloud above made it possible for us to watch Sydney approaching beneath us as we descended back to earth, on the opposite side of the globe to where we live.  It was a spectacular view.

Mr & Mrs M greet us at the airport and take us to Glebe, where we’re staying this week.  We catch up over a coffee and they give us the lowdown on all the neighbourhoods in the city (or “seedy” as it’s called here).  (7)

Jet lag is a bitch, apparently.  I don’t think it’s kicked in yet, because I feel alright.  We are strongly advised to stay up and resist the temptation to sleep today.  Three coffees and a cold shower later, I feel fantastic.  Fresh as a summer breeze.

Jet lag ain’t shit.  (8)

An hour later, I am really struggling (9).  It’s a bit like a really bad hangover, coupled with a vicious comedown, but it’s not exactly like that.  I’ve never experienced it before, and it’s quite difficult to describe.  Despite my verbosity.  Everything becomes oddly disorientating and fraught: walking to a shop, being in a shop, talking to a person serving in a shop, or any people shopping in a shop.  I feel very wobbly – not like I will fall over, but I’ve got a strong sense that it’s a viable option with every movement, so my movements seem simultaneously normal and yet freakish, as if every step was my first.  It’s strange, and mostly, but not entirely, unpleasant.

Jet lag is a bitch.

We skitter about our neighbourhood; we can’t stay in the flat, we’ll be asleep and ruin our plan to keep the jet lag under control.  We are determined.  I’ve never drank so much coffee in such a short space of time.

We’re still excited to be here, and keep reminding each other that “we’re in Australia!”, as if someone will stop us in the street and tell us not to be so daft, of course we’re not, this is Bishops Stortford, what’s wrong with you?

It’s warm and sunny, which helps.  Weeks before the trip, we’d been expecting dizzyingly-high temperatures, as well as some heavy storms.  But we’ve missed the worst of it; someone tells us it was 42 degrees a couple of weeks ago, and I am very grateful to have been in the dismal British winter at the time.  (10)

We are here.  Right then, what’s Australia all about…?



Notes

1.       I forget who won the race.  It’s not important, anyway, so shut up.

2.       For those who don’t speak Scots, “dreech” is the word for that hanging grey misery that makes a place cold and damp and look really unappealing to sunshiney people.  Most English people pronounce it “dreek”.  Which is all wrong.  “Drog” is my own compound.

3.       Hong Kong Airport also has the World Record-breaking Most Expensive Drinks Ever.  (HK$174.90 for a small glass of wine and a pint of lager, if you’re interested.  (If you’re a Scottish tourist/visitor to London, you will be.)  That’s about £17, plus a charge for paying with the card.  Plus whatever the bank charges for using the card abroad.  We are proper tourists now.  I feel like a walking cliché for moaning about it, so I sit down.  And just smile and enjoy my pint.  We’re only having one, and even that seems daft, since there’s free drinks on the plane.  But here I am, the stupid British tourist.  I don’t care, it’s still exciting.  (In case you’re wondering, a £8 pint of Asahi tastes the same as a £4 one.))

4.       I’ve always enjoyed flying, mostly for the views.  I always try for a window seat, and have a right good look.  It’s still a real novelty – I think I’d have to fly a lot more than I do/have for it to wear off.

5.       We exit the plane through the front, which means we walk through the better classes: economy (us; normal seats, enough legroom for a shortarse like me), economy plus (for people who like to spend a little bit more for no discernible benefit; 38 mm more legroom and a tragically petty sense of superiority), first class (for well-off pensioners who’ve realised they a) can’t take it with them and b) need to sleep a lot) and finally, business class (for those who get someone else to pay for their massive, fold-down seats, big folding TV screens and folded blankets (all of which allow for un-folded bodies, stretched across the space of 3 or 4 economy-size seats), the free gifts – all left behind – and the accompanying smug sense of self-satisfaction.)

6.       If you’re looking for something to help with this, taking advantage of free whisky on the plane is strongly recommended.  It will, least, take the edge off.  (“Take the edge off” is a phrase my brother uses a lot, although I sometimes feel he could do with putting some edge on.)

7.       Glebe is quiet but cool, with good restaurants and cafes.  Adjoining Newtown is also cool.  As ever, I think of neighbourhoods back home they might be like, like the tourist I am, instead of just accepting things the way they are.

8.       Yes, obviously, my comeuppance is rapidly approaching.

9.       There it is, look.

10.    If the first few hours are anything to go by, we will presumably speak to every single person in Australia about weather.

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