AKL-LAX-LHR-YVR-AKL Part 2 "Get on the ground!!"
Oct 1, 2016, 3:55 am
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: NZ
Programs: airpoints
Posts: 65
AKL-LAX-LHR-YVR-AKL Part 2 "Get on the ground!!"
Part 2 “Get on the ground!!” LAX – LHR, late already.
LAX is a heaving mass of humanity and concrete, even the cleaners carry guns and although when empty it’s high ceilings would resemble a Cathedral it is never empty, it seethes and flows, ebbs and grows but it does not rest. it cannot rest, it has purpose.
Being eligible for priority check-in was cool, the kiosk is the same as the ones in AKL so we knew our way around. The kiosk objected to The Patient One’s passport and we had to take directions from a comfortable looking black lady in a dark blue uniform. For some reason it refused to issue him a boarding pass but being Air NZ that was fixed at the bag-drop and we headed left to join a line to an escalator that took us to another line that lead to somewhere else.
As we passed a group of rotund security types, who were standing around looking secure, I pointed out to them an unattended bag by one of the payphones and immediately regretted it as I was in no mood for an evacuation to delay my departure but I was in less of a mood for being blown to hamburger by a kilo or two of C4 and a badly soldered detonator with blinking red lights…we hurried to the escalator and showed an acutely beautiful Hispanic lady (LA is full of them) our boarding passes, thankfully making it to the next queue without anything exploding.
The Security types were probably in the car park preparing to blow up a set of GHD hair straighteners, a lipstick and a comfortable cardigan while a distraught passenger would be flying across the USA, dying a little inside every time another strand of hair assumed its natural curl.
The line snaked and we snaked with it to be diverted like cans in a cannery down another line where our souls were X-Rayed and we were reminded of the penalties of having too much liquids or pastes in our carry-on.
This passed without incident as the kilo of coke was in our checked baggage and the special exploding mineral water was divided into non-threatening quantities.
They must have missed our agenda and dark thoughts but that was not our problem.
A few turns and counter-turns led us into the most Cathedral like area we had encountered so far at the revamped LAX. We emerged into a vast area, high, very high ceilings, shops and people (I'm sure some pf the people were high), OMG how the clamouring racket of people and the general jangly vibes that such places generate bore on me like a weight!
We felt stressed and oppressed as we sought out the sanctuary of the Star Alliance lounge, passing though the hallowed portal into a muffled, well-stocked and perfectly air conditioned room that sucked away our cares like a BJ in a dark carpark.
We visibly relaxed and gorged on cheese, crackers and ginger ale, sat in comfy chairs and took in all the calm…however, there was an Ethiopian in the fuel supply as W C Fields famously said in a very old movie…you see crap was going down in Turkey, the military was trying to protect the people from the government and was killing anybody who objected to being saved. As a result anybody with any sense was not going there.
The lady opposite us was having a phone conversation with somebody who was scared, crying and hiding in their bathroom in Istanbul, she begged the lady to reconsider her plans to fly to the troubled country…pleas which fell on deaf (or stupid) ears.
As I was refilling my cheese platter and struggling with the mineral water tap TPO observed some other lady, a dowdy frumpy thing but possibly either FBI, MI6 or Illuminati, or all three, lean over towards the would be traveller. She pointed to something on her tablet and said “You won’t get this information anywhere else but I would advise you not to go”.
By the time I returned with a half kilo of vintage Otago cheddar the traveller was on the phone to her husband saying “Oh well, I ‘m still going to go, what is the worst that could happen?...Yes dear but I’ll just end up somewhere else in Europe for a few days…” After Brexit that was quite possibly the worst that could happen...
I turned to TPO and shrugged, he concurred and we went outside to sit on the deck lest we develop compassion for the silly woman.
The outside part of the lounge is great, an Al-Fresco BBQ area with sun and real air… you can watch planes land, vehicles drive about and things that you do not quite understand happen as they do 24/7 at LAX.
Being totally sad we watched NZ2 come in on Flight Radar 24 on my phone, which was fun but not as fun as it could be because we could only see landings on the domestic runway but I did catch a glimpse of the black liveried 777-300 on the approach….nice!
So we ate cheese and drank fizzy water (orange juice in TPO’s case) until it was time to go and hang about the gate area. We enjoyed taking in the new and very nice corridors and windows, pausing only to buy a “Hello Kitty” thingy for The Hormones plus some water and snacks for the ordeal ahead.
And hang we did, the inbound was late and there was a another delay in boarding. Eventually we were allowed to use my Air NZ status to board first and together, we took up our places in the same seats we had occupied for the AKL-LAX leg and waited…and waited….and chatted to the lovely UK flight attendant who unsurprisingly was called Laura and was simply charming.
The Captain came on the PA and explained that we were waiting for 3 pax who had checked in earlier in the day but had since gone AWOL and as they had bags we would have to wait a while longer until the pax were located.
We chatted with the FA again and found out enough about her life to know how and when to kidnap her and the likely ransom we could raise. The Captain spoke again and told us that the missing pax had been located, two of them were on board but the third was face-down in the back of a police van and unlikely to return. This was good news except for the fact that they now had to locate his bags and remove them before we could fly.
The delay was so long that the FA was able to find out a few facts and I made up the rest so that I can tell you the full story…
• People arrive earlier in the day from somewhere in the USA and check in for NZ2 and being from Auckland decide to go and get drunk for half a day
• People arrive at LAX a bit late, drunk and flustered and make it as far as the mind-control and X-ray machines, the conversation between men with guns and one of the drunk pax goes like this
• “You have SSSS on your boarding pass, step this way for a strip search”
• “Feck off…”
• “Sir…You have SSSS on your boarding pass, step this way for a strip search”
• “Bollocks I am”
• “SIR! You have to step this way for a strip search”
• “Feck you…”
• “Sir, we are going to strip search you even it means down at the police station”
• (Heavy footsteps and Glocks being cocked)
• “Feck…off, you’re not going to strip search me you mongrels”
• “GET ON THE GROUND, GET ON THE GROUND!!!!”
• “Fu….”
• “Crunch, slap, click”…our anti-hero is led away to spend some quality time in a cage with drunks and hookers…which probably wasn’t too different to the rest of his morning between check in and arrest….
So eventually, about 90 mins late, we pushed back and I broke the IFE all in the same second, bugger just froze on me…I had a girlfriend like that once but that story will have to wait.
As we crawled across the tarmac waiting for a slot to take off, the charming FA called Laura tried 3 times to re-set the IFE to no avail. To rectify the situation she allowed me to move to the last middle row, which had been reserved for FA’s, vomiting children or corpses depending on how the flight went…this actually pleased me no end as it meant TPO had even more personal space and I won a whole row all to myself.
So we lumbered into the air for the relatively short 9 hour hop to London.
My reward of a whole row to myself was short-lived as not only did they have the temerity to install a fat bloke on the other end of the row but I froze my arse off!!!
All the cold air ends up at the back and has nothing to do but insinuate itself up one’s vest and down one’s shirt with evil intent. I dug out my soft-shell jacket, an extra T shirt, stole some more blankets and cocooned myself like an aged caterpillar. This made me so warm that I fell asleep just after we had been fed with some brown stuff, a blob of not-quite-yellow and squeaky green beans…but it tasted OK provided one shut one’s eyes and tried not to guess or imagine what it was.
It was another turbulent flight but not as bad as the Pacific leg. I experienced the extreme pleasure of flying directly over Thunder Bay again…this is where ScarletHarlot was born and as such is one of my favourite places in Canada and is probably way nicer in my imagination than it is in the cold light of an Autumn day. If I ever visit there it will still be a thrill and I will get a huge buzz from it.
There is only so much one can say about sleeping (and pooing) on aeroplanes but I’ll say it anyway. Air NZ have a huge collection of movies and music, it is one of the few times that I actually watch a movie. In this case “What we do in the shadows” kept me amused and made me chuckle a fair bit at the unlikely scenario of a group of Vampires flatting together in Wellington and their interactions with the local Werewolves and the Cops…see it if you get the chance, it is a typically insane NZ movie.
I also get to try out new music on long-haul flights and listened to more Sigur Ros, tried another Lana Del Ray album and then some Chili Peppers to soothe my disturbed and tar-black soul.
Lots more sleeping and sitting in toilets just for the change of scenery. I was going to have to hit the ground running once in the UK as my insane schedule was timed to the minute but I needed to make the most of this trip as I don’t know when I will have the time or money to do it again.
But there was this family…they turned out to be going to Croatia and they were just fecked in the head man…the kids were like squirming things and were constantly standing in their seats, looking at the pax behind them, bothering them and yelling. They took great umbrage at being fed anything that wasn’t 98% sugar and went over the lines in their colouring books.
Father was a fat, loud slob, the Mrs barely one step further evolved. They insisted in going to the toilets as a herd, right beside me in the otherwise quiet sanctuary at the back they descended, all six of them and one by one they violated the crapper whilst those yet to perform kicked on the door and ran grubby, sticky hands over every available surface.
I was up by the centre galley when they returned and the smaller miscreants grabbed everything they could lay their hands on. They grabbed headphones, newspapers and pillows. Each item was returned by the mother, stained, soiled and violated by sticky, nasty little brat-hands…I did my mantras lest I grab the little thugs and stuck them head-first down the toilet.
They returned to their allocated seats and proceeded to sneeze and spray snot everywhere. I pulled my T-Shirt over my nose, shuffled past the melee back to my seat, pulled the blankets over my head and plugged myself back into Lana’s weird universe and gradually fell asleep again.
The sleeping did me good and despite feeling violated by having a fat bloke sitting at the other end of the row I was tolerably comfortable. As the sunrise lightshow came up in the cabin I felt that I was actually having a morning. This was further reinforced by the delivery of my favourite food in the universe…airline breakfasts!!!!!
I re-joined TPO and we watched the UK heave into sight on a perfect summer’s day. We gazed upon England’s Green and Pleasant Land, felt at home, nostalgic and a long way from home all at once.
My biggest worry was that some loose-headed ISIS supporter would be standing on the roof of a block of flats, wearing brown shoes. With a guided missile nestling in his beard he would let fly and blast us from the skies and after all the organising and effort it took to pull this trip off, we would tumble onto the East End of London like an oversized and rather late Doodle-Bug, all flames and destruction.
We eyed the fields and the by-ways, we observed the housing estates and roundabouts as we lost height, and we talked about how things will be in the UK.
“You know” I mused to TPO “I think I have been in NZ so long now that am bound to upset someone with my casual and informal colonial ways”
“Yes” he concurred “Don’t forget what happened to that guy in LAX”
“True” I wrinkled my nose in agreement and thought long and hard about behaving. I tried to remember where the boundaries lie because in NZ one can go right to the boundary before getting a final warning. In the UK, as I recall, one only has to be heading towards it before Tazers are drawn or people take offence in a big way, hell, I know places in the UK where merely possessing a penis will get you on the wrong end of things!!
So, we started to bubble over with anticipation and fear. Me fearing getting arrested for being a dick, TPO fearing me getting arrested for being a dick and leaving him to fend for himself in the labyrinthine corridors of LHR, possibly remaining there for days before someone fed him and sent him on his way.
I resolved to be nice to people in important hats because in small island nations such accoutrements of power are taken very seriously indeed. This can manifest to the point that utter feckwits who are completely in the wrong can seriously delay your travel plans simply because you did not recognise their importance and massive inferiority complex in time.
We landed, another smooth one but not quite up to yesterday’s greaser at LAX although perfectly adequate.
Then there is that moment of stillness, the sun shines through the windows illuminating motes of dust as they dance about the cabin, tired and wan FA’s smile through decaying foundation and relish the thought of sleep.
…and Action!!! The overhead bins are opened, there is a bustling in the aisles and a tangible feeling of “at last!!” Yeah, we all love/hate long-haul…
Passing the seats that the grubby family had occupied I saw a sea of spilt crisps, biscuit crumbs, ripped colouring books, chunks of random matter smeared on every surface and a general picture of vileness. I pitied the cleaners.
So then you walk and walk and walk and go up down and around in the new and improved (since I was last there a decade ago) LHR to meet your nemesis at the passport control kiosks. Nobody was armed and the family from hell had peeled off to the transit area so I felt clean again.
Ordeal by tensa-barrier, confusion over why the sign said UK passports to go one way and Johnny- foreigner another but you couldn’t go there and we all went to the same place.
As we shunted down the maze of fabric tape we had a yarn with another Kiwi passenger (can’t talk to the Poms, they edge away looking startled if you talk to them on public transport) and emerged at the head of the queue.
“You, number 23” a brown lady with a French accent motioned to her right and directed me to the furthest extent of the kiosks.
“You, number 3” she motioned left and TPO ended up at the opposite end.
I approached the very shiny, very dark brown man in an important hat at the kiosk. I removed my hat and handed him my smart looking Kiwi passport. He looked at me, then at my passport suddenly becoming very edgy and startled.
“Did you fly over with him?” he indicated towards TPO.
“Yes”
His eyes widened “You can’t be processed here; you have to be with him!!”
“But he has a Pommie passport and mine is Kiwi, just do us as two individuals, we aren’t married or anything”
He took a step back “But I’ll get in trouble!”
“I have never met the man, I don’t know who he is, and we just got to the front of the queue together…does that make it easier?”
His eyes started to roll in his head “No, you must go through together!!!”
“Oh for fu…….” I caught myself just in time…”No Jafa, you must shut the feck up and comply” my sensible self told my impulsive self…remember LAX”.
I did and although spending the night in a cage full of hookers didn’t seem such a bad thing I do find drunks rather tiresome so I stepped back, taking my passport from the shiny man.
“Waddup?” enquired TPO
“I remembered to shut up just in time…let’s just do as they say and get out of here…”
TPO laughed and gave me that look that says “You’re a worry but life is always interesting with you around”
We complied and were welcomed into the UK by people in hats who do not speak English as their first language; did I say that was a bad thing? No, I didn’t, so quell your protestations; I just tell it like it is.
More walking and then we got our bags back, finding that "Priority Bags" means that they just give it a priority for delay and I fidgetted by the carousel until they emerged.
We told lies and went through the green channel to emerge into the same bewildering mass of humanity that you will find at any International Airport. We had made it, two flights down, two to go but now a week in blighty.
Being an incurable optimist and a good keen man, I had set a punishing schedule and ended up just over an hour later sitting in Joella’s front room as if 2006 was last weekend. Funny how you pick up with true friends from just where you left off.
Shortly after that Joella, Ant and myself were eating burgers in a restaurant in Watford. It was very warm. I felt pretty much out of it but the company (some lads, now in their 30’s and attempting to breed) had turned up and I was impressed by how they had turned out, fine examples of young me all of them. What really touched me was how pleased they were to see me and how insistent they were that I had changed their lives for the better.
Then, due to operational inefficiencies on my part, Joella and I had to run to the car hire place and pick up my car, return to the restaurant and carry on having a good time until it was time for my next appointment, this time with Louisa.
Tahir dropped me off because he is a good egg and I love him dearly.
I had a good but all too brief time with Louisa. She is an impressively motivated young woman and carving out a stellar career in dealing shite to bad guys…this is good.
A couple of beers had me wilting badly and Louisa drove me back to the oasis of calm that is where Amie and Joella have their flats. The calm soaked into me and try as I might I couldn’t keep awake, no matter how stimulating the company of Amie is I just kept getting the buzzy-fades and I was ordered to bed.
ZZZZZ-ZZZZZ-ZZZZZ I was out of it in seconds. Oh, the bliss of being horizontal and free from turbulence!
I awoke at 5am, all was quiet. I opened the windows and breathed it all in. I sat in the lounge in my PJ’s and had breakfast, revelling in the peace and tranquillity of it all. I saw squirrels for the first time in 10 years!
Toast and honey and Google maps telling me that there had already been a crash on the M25 right at the Junction I would take to get to Corsham…how do people do it? Crash on an empty motorway, at 5am on a friggin’ Sunday????
So, I just lazed around for as long as I could, smelling the air and feeling glad we had come here in summer.
TPO was back in Norfolk by now, he had other fish to fry. I was on a mission to go and visit someone I went to school with who I hadn’t seen in 39 years. My impressions of her Facebook interactions were that she was not at all like I had thought she was at school and I really wanted to catch up with her because she intrigued me and I felt the bond of winning that Shakespeare competition together all those years ago was still strong.
Yep, I do random things on an impulse but they are never the wrong thing to do, I use the force lol!
I set out on the 2 hour drive, GPS whispering sweet nothings in my ear and nearly got as far as 4 miles from Amie’s gaff when I felt that maybe this was a really bad idea from a health and safety point of view. I was, to use the vernacular, about fecked!!!!
Now I don’t (actually can’t) drink tea or coffee so at times like this I go for the sugar rush and that means God’s gift to the world….chocolate! I bought four bars and some chewing gum, I was set for anything!!
The motorway was a scary place but I got back into it and made good time. About halfway through the journey I stoped to help a stranded female motorist with a flat tyre. Many people had driven past her without so much as a second glance. Once I had convinced her that I was not a chainsaw-wielding maniac she unlocked the door and siwtched her rape alarm off and I changed the tyre in record time. We chatted about who, what and why we were and as I left she gave me a big hug and said "I've been to NZ, I think if a Kiwi hadn't come along I would have been here all day".
The visit to see V was a success from my point of view although I have no idea if I made an arse of myself but V seemed pleased to see me. I left wishing I had seen more of her over the years because she seemed like a good keen girl with some interesting stories to tell. I have this thing, a bit like that show "My name is Earl", I want to visit every girl I think I was mean to at school and explain myself, put it all right. I shudder when I recall my teenage years...
Somehow I made it back to Amie’s flat without my bladder bursting, crashing in a fiery, cartwheeling oblivion or getting stuck in traffic. At one point my GPS whispered the words that are guaranteed to get me panting…”do you want to save 1 hr and 1 minute on this journey to avoid traffic?”
“Oh take me, take me GPS Lady!!!”
After a sleep that felt like being dead I struggled to the pub for a big reunion with all the people from NW London who have forgotten what a dick I really am. About twenty turned up and the more I drank, the better I felt, so I drank more, had a most excellent time and finally made it to bed at 1am.
I am privileged to know such wonderful people…
I somehow managed to wake up with no ill-effects at something o’clock in the morning and on the way to return the hire car I pulled into a café for a proper Full English Breakafst….in England, cooked by English people no less!!
I talked to the guy behind the counter about his tattoos and studiously avoided telling him how much I thought they sucked. There was no real artistry, no actual planning, if he was intending to map out the main points of his life in a sleeve that grew over the years he really needed to get his poop together.
No, it looked more like every time he took too many drugs or found himself in a random seaside holiday resort, wasted on cheap lager and cigarettes, he would suddenly have this brilliant idea for a tattoo. With no overall plan he would go and get a badly-drawn dragon sitting on a mushroom or some other god-awful symbol of Crustines,s such as two Wizards pointing at a tree. (I wish I had been hallucinating at the time as it may all have made sense).
Replete and after a good crap in a toilet painted like a cross between Enid Blyton and Woodstock, I returned the hire car and blagged a lift to Watford Junction Railway Station to make my way to the Intergalactic Headquarters of an organisation allegedly run by Shape-Shifting Lizards from the planet Draco (again I wish I was kidding).
Watford, say that word and roll it’s Britishness around your mouth like a good cigar. Savour it’s very essence of all that is average about English folks and their Ford saloons and 2.4 children. Bask if you will in the very image of what Britain could attain once the Brexit crowd have chased Johnny Foreigner back to that filthy hell-hole known as Europe.
Then open your eyes as the stern-looking Russian lady takes your money and hands you a ticket from “Vatford” to “Wictoria”. Step gaily to one side as a Polish or Lithuanian cleaner reduces your chances of slipping by guiding you around a puddle of her own making. Nod to the shiny African man with his important hat at the barrier and negotiate the purchase of a bottle of water from a very polite Muslim lady who is too pretty to wear a bag over her head and whose eyes glitter from behind the veil with a provocative sexuality that makes one’s parts shiver.
Holding that thought I exited the morning-shadowed station buildings onto a sunlight platform to rest on a thing like a seat that is designed to discourage sitting. I turned my closed eyes to the sun and soaked up its energy like an Iguana and listened…to the Tower of Babel.
The only English language I could hear were my own thoughts, I could have been anywhere in Europe, the world even!!
Looking around I saw a diverse beauty as if a childhood book about other lands had blown open and scattered all the races on God’s good earth about me.
My reverie was broken by a noisy of mob of fat, ugly white people, ugly on the inside too and appearing to come from the bog-garden end of the gene pool.
They made a lot of noise and litter, they injected an ugliness born of generations of xenophobia and caused me to ask myself a profound question…if you kicked out all the foreigners from Britain….would you really want to see more of these types of people?. I fear for the future of the UK, it is neither united nor is it a kingdom...it is just one big Watford...
My train arrived and I tried to board with 3 bags and a mistaken idea that people outside the colonies have manners. I was not allowed on, the crush of humanity would not compress to permit egress. This shocked me as I watched the train depart to the south.
In NZ strangers would have hefted my bags aboard the train and dragged me into its upholstered embrace. There they would have engaged me in conversation, found out my life story and insisted I came back their house for Pavlova and sex with their wife.
Alone and mentally wounded I tried again with the next train and alas, I was crowded out by those who regard helping a fellow traveller to be an admission of weakness and god forbid, the person they helped might engage them in conversation!. Or yet worse, make eye contact!…on public transport!! Oh the horror in their eyes as they, Johnny foreigner and fat ugly white people alike, ran this unseemly scenario through their mind’s eye before turning away…I ignore therefore thou aren’t…
I processed this dilemma and decided that aggression is the better part of valour. The next train arrived and I barged into the crowd, suitcases akimbo and an attitude to the fore. The crowd parted like the dead sea as I mercilessly forced people back into the depths of the carriage, elbows and knees unseating yielding flesh and nobody complained.
It is far better to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous colonial behaviour than to ever even consider speaking out loud on public transport.
I stared at a thin, toxic white man who wouldn’t let me stand upright but rather ignored me as I bent myself into the shape of the curved carriage door. He let his guard down and made eye contact for just long enough for my twinkling hazel eyes to turn dark and fill with menace. Fearing for the future of his family he edged away as if I was wearing Crocs with socks.
At least I was on my way to “Wictoria” now….
We rumbled through the morning sunshine, past back gardens full of rotting crap, graffiti-soiled fences and the rampant growth that envelopes all the detritus of living that the British are wont to lob over their back garden fences or walls, out of sight, out of mind.
Yet there are also those who seem too morbidly attached to their own filth to throw anything away, cars, tricycles, mounds of nappies, tables chairs and old suitcases, it isn’t just one person per mile but possibly everybody who lives by a railway line that feels honour bound to exhibit the symptoms of being a chronic hoarder.
I wondered if they clung on to their dear departed with such fervour and if, behind every set of mouldering net curtains, there was the decaying husk of a granny, an aunt or a parent?
Deeper into the bowels of London we rolled, clank, rattle, clunk and the filth that coats everything within reach of the railways grew thicker and blacker. Maybe this very filth coated the minds of those with dwellings that back onto the railway and as it choked the joy from their lives they just gave up and chucked crap into their gardens because no matter how hard they tried, their Delphiniums came up looking like corpses and the B&Q outdoors furniture, so dazzlingly white in the warehouse, aged and putrefied within days.
My mood was growing sombre and I realised that one of the reasons I had such a bleak outlook as a teenager was that I commuted to college by rail and the miasmic train-filth had suffocated the life from my soul.
I needed a release from all this so I took to examining my fellow travellers, “fellow” probably being too strong a word and I made up a new or supposed life for each of them.
For example:
The Hipster, he sat looking sternly at his brown Brogues, prematurely aged in a factory in Pakistan so they would look like he inherited them off of his Granddad. His beard screamed the hipster dichotomy of “Look at me I’m different but ignore me I am sensitive and I fear your looks may hurt me”. Crazy mixed up lad, here he was with a degree in Post-Modern Art and Business Studies, humming Death Cab for Cutie songs like a mantra and wondering if he will ever get an office with a window and would he have an existential crisis if he did?
The dude with a barely hidden personality disorder, a very nice white shirt and blaring red tie. While outwardly he was very confident and used all the latest business-speak as he yelled into his phone at a supposed minion or drone… he was probably talking to the speaking clock and wet the bed most nights.
Such reverie brought me at last to Euston Station, dusty, dark but nostalgically London. The ozone smell of the elcetric underground trains brought me back to a life I knew I could never cope with again...I have gone native in New Zealand and as such travelling about in a city like London would stifle me.
Deeper into the bowls of the capital I descended, frustrated that half the escalators were closed for repair. I became outraged at how difficult is was to get three bags through an automatic gate that appeared to be designed to remove kneecaps. Most of all I fought down claustrophobia, fear of bombs in waste bins and pickpockets.
By some miracle of faith and karma I emerged back into the light at Viictoria Station, a vast cavern of a place, busy as a Middle Eastern restaurant after Ramadan and just as noisy. A cacophony of announcements, beeping electric things, trains and the constant background rumble of London traffic assaulted my senses.
I struggled to find the correct entrance to locate a cab to take me to Intergalactic HQ. Like a true colonial bumpkin I went the wrong way and nearly got run over by a delivery truck and a gaggle of people who could walk but could only look straight ahead, their world defined by their sense of entitlement and the deadly, crushing fear of arriving somewhere a quarter of a second after somebody else.
Being male I couldn’t ask for directions so I headed upstream through the human tide and looked up high for signs, with arrows and words.
On finding them I made my way down an insignificant part of the station concourse and found myself at the wrong end of a corrugated iron shelter for people to wait for a cab under.
Each cab I approached ushered me further up the line. Like a cow at a stock auction I eventually blundered through a kink at the end to be met by a real “Gor-Blimey” geezer wiv a right pukka Lahndahn accent and not the slightest fecking clue as to where the tiny street that hid the entrance to the HQ was.
“I thought you guys had to do the knowledge before you could drive a cab?” I enquired
“Gawd luv a duck me old china, you’ve got me there gor blimey, chim chiminee cheroo” He blustered without confirming or denying the fact.
He continued “Ang abhart guvnor, I’ll just ask me GPS but it’s been a grumble of a day and I’m right embarrassed abaht you catchin’me aht” . He seemed cheery in the face of conflict and I hoped he wouldn’t burst into an old WW2 drinking song to steel his nerve in the face of disaster.
I booted up the GPS in my phone, entered the top-secret coordinates and after subtly injecting him with a drug to make him forget he ever went there, I directed him to “The Place”.
With a rictus grin and a flash of gold medallion in the V of his unbuttoned shirt collar he grabbed my suitcases, declared his love for Mary Poppins and Margaret Thatcher and reduced the price of the ride because he had learned something today. As the drugs took hold he would completely forget what that was and next time one of our people needed to make this journey he would again not be able to find it and need directions from his fare.
He departed and the short street, flanked into chasm-hood by tall, dirty beige brick buildings with red brick accents became still and quiet, the marvels of stealth technology blanked out the nose of traffic and all sense of population.
An ageing man, dressed as if he belonged here 50 years ago saw me and took pains to disappear as I searched for the sign that would indicate the entrance to “The Place” but it wasn’t there…I phoned “Mr Smith” but no answer.
Fearing that I had failed some form of scrutiny I wandered into a courtyard to see if I could find the door but it was only some department of obscurity building, a place where men who were “something in the city” did that something undisturbed and with no fear of anything except democracy.
Frustrated and overheated I retraced my steps to the place I had seen the mystery man disappear but all I saw was a secretary smoking a cigarette. She was so bound by mind-control that she could not see me.
With the distinct feeling that this was a test I took another look at an anonymous white door and there it was, although I could swear it wasn’t there before, a tiny sign, white with coloured symbols on it. I knew these symbols as did others of my rank in the global hierarchy…I was in! I had passed the test and would be admitted, for the first time ever, into the intergalactic HQ to meet with the Lizards from Draco.
Inside I pressed a buzzer and a female voice asked me who the feck I was. On hearing my name she declared that “Mr Smith” was expecting me, the door buzzed energetically and I entered a dark place.
As my eyes adjusted to the light I found myself in a small room that was divided into other rooms, each performing an essential function in the hierarchy.
I chatted with the dark-skinned and very beautiful lady I had spoken to on the intercom, while we waited for “Mr Smith” to complete his transition into human form and come to take responsibility for me.
Today I would learn some truths, after 21 years with “The Organisation” I was now considered dangerous enough to need re-briefing.
In human form “Mr Smith” was quite convincing, only the way that passing flies grabbed his attention gave away the true nature of his being.
He showed me things and talked about things, many of which were top-secret but I must have caught a whiff of what I gave the cab driver for I can no longer remember which of the things he told me were not to be repeated. So now, two months after the event, as I sit through “ORB Development” meetings I have to just say nothing for fear of revealing too much and having my security status downgraded.
“Mr Smith” took me to lunch at the Bavarian Cricket Club. This is a bizarre establishment that serves German beer on big wooden tables and Australian girls, who pretend to be German but end up sounding Swedish, present the hungry global overlords with a menu that had only Schnitzel on. You can order any kind of Schnitzel, made from the animal of your choice and served with a salad of whatever Waitrose were on the verge of chucking to the pigs that day.
It was a pleasant repast but I knew he was just feeding me up to dull my senses for the main event, trying to make me drop my guard and share my truths with them. Fat chance “Mr Smith”, I’ve been jerked around by professionals, you won’t get me that easily.
Back at “The Place” I was locked in a room with “Mr H” and shown more secret stuff, some if it Slovakian!! He got nothing out of me, he dropped his guard instead and told me his secrets…mwhahahahaaa!
Then came the main event, I was shown around the office and introduced to a phalanx of pretty girls, all who had a job to do of specific intent and all of whom could be bribed with chocolate. They are pawns in the game of global domination, they present an air of distracted whimsy and stiff upper lips but in reality they are, collectively, the forefront of the great game.
As a punishment for stealing their chocolate and being way too convincing with the flirting I was sent to see “Mr Don’t” a man who prior to this had made me shake with fear at the mere mention of his name. He was good, very good. He told me that I should never stop being honest, so I told him I hated his shirt. He told me that he appreciated such feedback because everybody else just agreed with him in case he ate their babies and that didn’t help him to take control of their minds.
I listened through a rising fog of jet-lag as he discussed things of a personal nature that may have been a script designed to make me drop my guard but by now I was having trouble remembering my own name so couldn’t tell him anything important.
“Mr Don’t” passed me on to “Mr Might” who has a disarming way about him, you know he is a double-agent but he makes too much sense for you to hold him to account, my head was whirling…what did these people want from me?
And then it dawned on me…all they wanted was for me to like them and to believe in them (in human form at least) I had to admit, as a bunch of Shapeshifting Lizards intent on world domination they pretty much sucked because I had seen them as human beings and not merely roles within a hierarchy and this was not what they wanted. The way in which I turned the scenario to my advantage was not to tell them…keep the buggers guessing I say…
“Mr H” came for me as I had been summoned by “Mr Smith” to lob the hand grenade of opinion into an otherwise orderly debate about outdoor activities. I did as I was asked and one day the debate might even develop terms of reference and be taken to a plenary session or a workshop,
My time at “The Place” slipped away like a Donald Trump fact when held up to scrutiny and I was genuinely sorry to leave. “Mr H” tried to lure me into a pub so he could get me drunk and download my central cortex but I was too smart for him, I had a train ticket to Brighton and I was gonna use it!!!
The train to Brighton was so full and so badly designed for any travel other than that which involves playing Candy Crush Saga that I had to sit with my big suitcase on my lap and my knees jamming the carry-on under the table. The only upside to this monstrous arrangement was that not everybody was going all the way to Brighton so seats should become available later and a very lovely lady of mysterious cultural origins was able to sit beside me while I lost the use of both legs and one arm.
We rumbled on southwards and when not eyeing up the charming thing beside me I fantasised about living in the isolated patches of trees that sat beside the railway line, alone, armed and on the run from those who would do me harm. It kept me going while the driver moaned to us over the PA about Rail Traffic Control not allowing him to overtake the commuter train that stopped at every station and sometimes in between.
“Mr Smith” had warned me that the trains were fecked and my 1 hour journey to Brighton might take a generation and that the person who arrived at Brighton could well be one of my progeny, who had been conceived, born, raised and married on the Brighton Express.
As it was we were only a light year late and my long-suffering brother was there to greet me with a bemused look as if to say that he couldn’t comprehend why anybody would contemplate travelling by train in the south of England’s green and peasant land.
So, after a night of show and tell there followed a very enjoyable road trip that would have been a lot shorter had our male proclivity for tuning out the female voice not caused us to not actually listen to the GPS lady. We ended up doing a 40 mile loop instead of heading straight to a dot on the map that contained “Mr Over The Top” and a pub built shortly after the biblical flood (which as some would have it would make it 5,000 years old).
“Mr Twig” was supposed to make this rendezvous to share a trove of secrets about one of his ex-girlfriends but his feet were riddled with gangrene and he had to stay in Kent.
After deciding that the 3 of us all held differing opinions on Brexit but were united in our love of a bargain ultralight, we parted ways and my brother and I spent a very enjoyable couple of days revisiting some childhood haunts in Norfolk. We uncovered irrefutable proof that people from Norfolk (unless they contain foreign blood like us) really do have webbed feet and spent time with my wonderfully energetic dad.
I met up with another old female schoolfriend in a pub in Norwich, it was very nice indeed and another male one came out to the one-whore town my brother has his holiday cottage in and helped me remember many things that should probably have been left forgotten Lol!
We spent time with Aunts, Uncles and Cousins, met another of my step fathers and some people we used to drink and party with many hundreds of years ago when we were denizens of the east coast. All too soon it was time start heading south again, to LHR for an Air Canada flight to Vancouver (YVR).
This was facilitated by my Sister and her Jovial husband who barbecued an entire farm in our honour and subjected themselves to the unspeakable horror of a 3am start to beat the daily carnage that is the M25, the UK’s most popular suicide spot for those who like to die in a car or truck.
Being stoic sorts and unfailingly wonderful they dragged us by our hair into the Audi at dark ‘o clock and with one eye on the GPS and it’s amazing ability to spot areas of crap driving and another on the road they got us to LHR in time to have breakfast and nearly cry at having to leave so soon. Staying longer, though it woul dhave brought joy to my heart was not an option. I had to get to YVR to meet the Harlots (I still had their Kilo of cocaine and it was starting to chafe) and TPO had to go back and mend all the boats in New Zealand before high tide.
In the next part I lose my cool because of stupid, flipping, crap stuff about suitcases and TPO ends up in Fiji low on gas….keep it real until then folks…
LAX is a heaving mass of humanity and concrete, even the cleaners carry guns and although when empty it’s high ceilings would resemble a Cathedral it is never empty, it seethes and flows, ebbs and grows but it does not rest. it cannot rest, it has purpose.
Being eligible for priority check-in was cool, the kiosk is the same as the ones in AKL so we knew our way around. The kiosk objected to The Patient One’s passport and we had to take directions from a comfortable looking black lady in a dark blue uniform. For some reason it refused to issue him a boarding pass but being Air NZ that was fixed at the bag-drop and we headed left to join a line to an escalator that took us to another line that lead to somewhere else.
As we passed a group of rotund security types, who were standing around looking secure, I pointed out to them an unattended bag by one of the payphones and immediately regretted it as I was in no mood for an evacuation to delay my departure but I was in less of a mood for being blown to hamburger by a kilo or two of C4 and a badly soldered detonator with blinking red lights…we hurried to the escalator and showed an acutely beautiful Hispanic lady (LA is full of them) our boarding passes, thankfully making it to the next queue without anything exploding.
The Security types were probably in the car park preparing to blow up a set of GHD hair straighteners, a lipstick and a comfortable cardigan while a distraught passenger would be flying across the USA, dying a little inside every time another strand of hair assumed its natural curl.
The line snaked and we snaked with it to be diverted like cans in a cannery down another line where our souls were X-Rayed and we were reminded of the penalties of having too much liquids or pastes in our carry-on.
This passed without incident as the kilo of coke was in our checked baggage and the special exploding mineral water was divided into non-threatening quantities.
They must have missed our agenda and dark thoughts but that was not our problem.
A few turns and counter-turns led us into the most Cathedral like area we had encountered so far at the revamped LAX. We emerged into a vast area, high, very high ceilings, shops and people (I'm sure some pf the people were high), OMG how the clamouring racket of people and the general jangly vibes that such places generate bore on me like a weight!
We felt stressed and oppressed as we sought out the sanctuary of the Star Alliance lounge, passing though the hallowed portal into a muffled, well-stocked and perfectly air conditioned room that sucked away our cares like a BJ in a dark carpark.
We visibly relaxed and gorged on cheese, crackers and ginger ale, sat in comfy chairs and took in all the calm…however, there was an Ethiopian in the fuel supply as W C Fields famously said in a very old movie…you see crap was going down in Turkey, the military was trying to protect the people from the government and was killing anybody who objected to being saved. As a result anybody with any sense was not going there.
The lady opposite us was having a phone conversation with somebody who was scared, crying and hiding in their bathroom in Istanbul, she begged the lady to reconsider her plans to fly to the troubled country…pleas which fell on deaf (or stupid) ears.
As I was refilling my cheese platter and struggling with the mineral water tap TPO observed some other lady, a dowdy frumpy thing but possibly either FBI, MI6 or Illuminati, or all three, lean over towards the would be traveller. She pointed to something on her tablet and said “You won’t get this information anywhere else but I would advise you not to go”.
By the time I returned with a half kilo of vintage Otago cheddar the traveller was on the phone to her husband saying “Oh well, I ‘m still going to go, what is the worst that could happen?...Yes dear but I’ll just end up somewhere else in Europe for a few days…” After Brexit that was quite possibly the worst that could happen...
I turned to TPO and shrugged, he concurred and we went outside to sit on the deck lest we develop compassion for the silly woman.
The outside part of the lounge is great, an Al-Fresco BBQ area with sun and real air… you can watch planes land, vehicles drive about and things that you do not quite understand happen as they do 24/7 at LAX.
Being totally sad we watched NZ2 come in on Flight Radar 24 on my phone, which was fun but not as fun as it could be because we could only see landings on the domestic runway but I did catch a glimpse of the black liveried 777-300 on the approach….nice!
So we ate cheese and drank fizzy water (orange juice in TPO’s case) until it was time to go and hang about the gate area. We enjoyed taking in the new and very nice corridors and windows, pausing only to buy a “Hello Kitty” thingy for The Hormones plus some water and snacks for the ordeal ahead.
And hang we did, the inbound was late and there was a another delay in boarding. Eventually we were allowed to use my Air NZ status to board first and together, we took up our places in the same seats we had occupied for the AKL-LAX leg and waited…and waited….and chatted to the lovely UK flight attendant who unsurprisingly was called Laura and was simply charming.
The Captain came on the PA and explained that we were waiting for 3 pax who had checked in earlier in the day but had since gone AWOL and as they had bags we would have to wait a while longer until the pax were located.
We chatted with the FA again and found out enough about her life to know how and when to kidnap her and the likely ransom we could raise. The Captain spoke again and told us that the missing pax had been located, two of them were on board but the third was face-down in the back of a police van and unlikely to return. This was good news except for the fact that they now had to locate his bags and remove them before we could fly.
The delay was so long that the FA was able to find out a few facts and I made up the rest so that I can tell you the full story…
• People arrive earlier in the day from somewhere in the USA and check in for NZ2 and being from Auckland decide to go and get drunk for half a day
• People arrive at LAX a bit late, drunk and flustered and make it as far as the mind-control and X-ray machines, the conversation between men with guns and one of the drunk pax goes like this
• “You have SSSS on your boarding pass, step this way for a strip search”
• “Feck off…”
• “Sir…You have SSSS on your boarding pass, step this way for a strip search”
• “Bollocks I am”
• “SIR! You have to step this way for a strip search”
• “Feck you…”
• “Sir, we are going to strip search you even it means down at the police station”
• (Heavy footsteps and Glocks being cocked)
• “Feck…off, you’re not going to strip search me you mongrels”
• “GET ON THE GROUND, GET ON THE GROUND!!!!”
• “Fu….”
• “Crunch, slap, click”…our anti-hero is led away to spend some quality time in a cage with drunks and hookers…which probably wasn’t too different to the rest of his morning between check in and arrest….
So eventually, about 90 mins late, we pushed back and I broke the IFE all in the same second, bugger just froze on me…I had a girlfriend like that once but that story will have to wait.
As we crawled across the tarmac waiting for a slot to take off, the charming FA called Laura tried 3 times to re-set the IFE to no avail. To rectify the situation she allowed me to move to the last middle row, which had been reserved for FA’s, vomiting children or corpses depending on how the flight went…this actually pleased me no end as it meant TPO had even more personal space and I won a whole row all to myself.
So we lumbered into the air for the relatively short 9 hour hop to London.
My reward of a whole row to myself was short-lived as not only did they have the temerity to install a fat bloke on the other end of the row but I froze my arse off!!!
All the cold air ends up at the back and has nothing to do but insinuate itself up one’s vest and down one’s shirt with evil intent. I dug out my soft-shell jacket, an extra T shirt, stole some more blankets and cocooned myself like an aged caterpillar. This made me so warm that I fell asleep just after we had been fed with some brown stuff, a blob of not-quite-yellow and squeaky green beans…but it tasted OK provided one shut one’s eyes and tried not to guess or imagine what it was.
It was another turbulent flight but not as bad as the Pacific leg. I experienced the extreme pleasure of flying directly over Thunder Bay again…this is where ScarletHarlot was born and as such is one of my favourite places in Canada and is probably way nicer in my imagination than it is in the cold light of an Autumn day. If I ever visit there it will still be a thrill and I will get a huge buzz from it.
There is only so much one can say about sleeping (and pooing) on aeroplanes but I’ll say it anyway. Air NZ have a huge collection of movies and music, it is one of the few times that I actually watch a movie. In this case “What we do in the shadows” kept me amused and made me chuckle a fair bit at the unlikely scenario of a group of Vampires flatting together in Wellington and their interactions with the local Werewolves and the Cops…see it if you get the chance, it is a typically insane NZ movie.
I also get to try out new music on long-haul flights and listened to more Sigur Ros, tried another Lana Del Ray album and then some Chili Peppers to soothe my disturbed and tar-black soul.
Lots more sleeping and sitting in toilets just for the change of scenery. I was going to have to hit the ground running once in the UK as my insane schedule was timed to the minute but I needed to make the most of this trip as I don’t know when I will have the time or money to do it again.
But there was this family…they turned out to be going to Croatia and they were just fecked in the head man…the kids were like squirming things and were constantly standing in their seats, looking at the pax behind them, bothering them and yelling. They took great umbrage at being fed anything that wasn’t 98% sugar and went over the lines in their colouring books.
Father was a fat, loud slob, the Mrs barely one step further evolved. They insisted in going to the toilets as a herd, right beside me in the otherwise quiet sanctuary at the back they descended, all six of them and one by one they violated the crapper whilst those yet to perform kicked on the door and ran grubby, sticky hands over every available surface.
I was up by the centre galley when they returned and the smaller miscreants grabbed everything they could lay their hands on. They grabbed headphones, newspapers and pillows. Each item was returned by the mother, stained, soiled and violated by sticky, nasty little brat-hands…I did my mantras lest I grab the little thugs and stuck them head-first down the toilet.
They returned to their allocated seats and proceeded to sneeze and spray snot everywhere. I pulled my T-Shirt over my nose, shuffled past the melee back to my seat, pulled the blankets over my head and plugged myself back into Lana’s weird universe and gradually fell asleep again.
The sleeping did me good and despite feeling violated by having a fat bloke sitting at the other end of the row I was tolerably comfortable. As the sunrise lightshow came up in the cabin I felt that I was actually having a morning. This was further reinforced by the delivery of my favourite food in the universe…airline breakfasts!!!!!
I re-joined TPO and we watched the UK heave into sight on a perfect summer’s day. We gazed upon England’s Green and Pleasant Land, felt at home, nostalgic and a long way from home all at once.
My biggest worry was that some loose-headed ISIS supporter would be standing on the roof of a block of flats, wearing brown shoes. With a guided missile nestling in his beard he would let fly and blast us from the skies and after all the organising and effort it took to pull this trip off, we would tumble onto the East End of London like an oversized and rather late Doodle-Bug, all flames and destruction.
We eyed the fields and the by-ways, we observed the housing estates and roundabouts as we lost height, and we talked about how things will be in the UK.
“You know” I mused to TPO “I think I have been in NZ so long now that am bound to upset someone with my casual and informal colonial ways”
“Yes” he concurred “Don’t forget what happened to that guy in LAX”
“True” I wrinkled my nose in agreement and thought long and hard about behaving. I tried to remember where the boundaries lie because in NZ one can go right to the boundary before getting a final warning. In the UK, as I recall, one only has to be heading towards it before Tazers are drawn or people take offence in a big way, hell, I know places in the UK where merely possessing a penis will get you on the wrong end of things!!
So, we started to bubble over with anticipation and fear. Me fearing getting arrested for being a dick, TPO fearing me getting arrested for being a dick and leaving him to fend for himself in the labyrinthine corridors of LHR, possibly remaining there for days before someone fed him and sent him on his way.
I resolved to be nice to people in important hats because in small island nations such accoutrements of power are taken very seriously indeed. This can manifest to the point that utter feckwits who are completely in the wrong can seriously delay your travel plans simply because you did not recognise their importance and massive inferiority complex in time.
We landed, another smooth one but not quite up to yesterday’s greaser at LAX although perfectly adequate.
Then there is that moment of stillness, the sun shines through the windows illuminating motes of dust as they dance about the cabin, tired and wan FA’s smile through decaying foundation and relish the thought of sleep.
…and Action!!! The overhead bins are opened, there is a bustling in the aisles and a tangible feeling of “at last!!” Yeah, we all love/hate long-haul…
Passing the seats that the grubby family had occupied I saw a sea of spilt crisps, biscuit crumbs, ripped colouring books, chunks of random matter smeared on every surface and a general picture of vileness. I pitied the cleaners.
So then you walk and walk and walk and go up down and around in the new and improved (since I was last there a decade ago) LHR to meet your nemesis at the passport control kiosks. Nobody was armed and the family from hell had peeled off to the transit area so I felt clean again.
Ordeal by tensa-barrier, confusion over why the sign said UK passports to go one way and Johnny- foreigner another but you couldn’t go there and we all went to the same place.
As we shunted down the maze of fabric tape we had a yarn with another Kiwi passenger (can’t talk to the Poms, they edge away looking startled if you talk to them on public transport) and emerged at the head of the queue.
“You, number 23” a brown lady with a French accent motioned to her right and directed me to the furthest extent of the kiosks.
“You, number 3” she motioned left and TPO ended up at the opposite end.
I approached the very shiny, very dark brown man in an important hat at the kiosk. I removed my hat and handed him my smart looking Kiwi passport. He looked at me, then at my passport suddenly becoming very edgy and startled.
“Did you fly over with him?” he indicated towards TPO.
“Yes”
His eyes widened “You can’t be processed here; you have to be with him!!”
“But he has a Pommie passport and mine is Kiwi, just do us as two individuals, we aren’t married or anything”
He took a step back “But I’ll get in trouble!”
“I have never met the man, I don’t know who he is, and we just got to the front of the queue together…does that make it easier?”
His eyes started to roll in his head “No, you must go through together!!!”
“Oh for fu…….” I caught myself just in time…”No Jafa, you must shut the feck up and comply” my sensible self told my impulsive self…remember LAX”.
I did and although spending the night in a cage full of hookers didn’t seem such a bad thing I do find drunks rather tiresome so I stepped back, taking my passport from the shiny man.
“Waddup?” enquired TPO
“I remembered to shut up just in time…let’s just do as they say and get out of here…”
TPO laughed and gave me that look that says “You’re a worry but life is always interesting with you around”
We complied and were welcomed into the UK by people in hats who do not speak English as their first language; did I say that was a bad thing? No, I didn’t, so quell your protestations; I just tell it like it is.
More walking and then we got our bags back, finding that "Priority Bags" means that they just give it a priority for delay and I fidgetted by the carousel until they emerged.
We told lies and went through the green channel to emerge into the same bewildering mass of humanity that you will find at any International Airport. We had made it, two flights down, two to go but now a week in blighty.
Being an incurable optimist and a good keen man, I had set a punishing schedule and ended up just over an hour later sitting in Joella’s front room as if 2006 was last weekend. Funny how you pick up with true friends from just where you left off.
Shortly after that Joella, Ant and myself were eating burgers in a restaurant in Watford. It was very warm. I felt pretty much out of it but the company (some lads, now in their 30’s and attempting to breed) had turned up and I was impressed by how they had turned out, fine examples of young me all of them. What really touched me was how pleased they were to see me and how insistent they were that I had changed their lives for the better.
Then, due to operational inefficiencies on my part, Joella and I had to run to the car hire place and pick up my car, return to the restaurant and carry on having a good time until it was time for my next appointment, this time with Louisa.
Tahir dropped me off because he is a good egg and I love him dearly.
I had a good but all too brief time with Louisa. She is an impressively motivated young woman and carving out a stellar career in dealing shite to bad guys…this is good.
A couple of beers had me wilting badly and Louisa drove me back to the oasis of calm that is where Amie and Joella have their flats. The calm soaked into me and try as I might I couldn’t keep awake, no matter how stimulating the company of Amie is I just kept getting the buzzy-fades and I was ordered to bed.
ZZZZZ-ZZZZZ-ZZZZZ I was out of it in seconds. Oh, the bliss of being horizontal and free from turbulence!
I awoke at 5am, all was quiet. I opened the windows and breathed it all in. I sat in the lounge in my PJ’s and had breakfast, revelling in the peace and tranquillity of it all. I saw squirrels for the first time in 10 years!
Toast and honey and Google maps telling me that there had already been a crash on the M25 right at the Junction I would take to get to Corsham…how do people do it? Crash on an empty motorway, at 5am on a friggin’ Sunday????
So, I just lazed around for as long as I could, smelling the air and feeling glad we had come here in summer.
TPO was back in Norfolk by now, he had other fish to fry. I was on a mission to go and visit someone I went to school with who I hadn’t seen in 39 years. My impressions of her Facebook interactions were that she was not at all like I had thought she was at school and I really wanted to catch up with her because she intrigued me and I felt the bond of winning that Shakespeare competition together all those years ago was still strong.
Yep, I do random things on an impulse but they are never the wrong thing to do, I use the force lol!
I set out on the 2 hour drive, GPS whispering sweet nothings in my ear and nearly got as far as 4 miles from Amie’s gaff when I felt that maybe this was a really bad idea from a health and safety point of view. I was, to use the vernacular, about fecked!!!!
Now I don’t (actually can’t) drink tea or coffee so at times like this I go for the sugar rush and that means God’s gift to the world….chocolate! I bought four bars and some chewing gum, I was set for anything!!
The motorway was a scary place but I got back into it and made good time. About halfway through the journey I stoped to help a stranded female motorist with a flat tyre. Many people had driven past her without so much as a second glance. Once I had convinced her that I was not a chainsaw-wielding maniac she unlocked the door and siwtched her rape alarm off and I changed the tyre in record time. We chatted about who, what and why we were and as I left she gave me a big hug and said "I've been to NZ, I think if a Kiwi hadn't come along I would have been here all day".
The visit to see V was a success from my point of view although I have no idea if I made an arse of myself but V seemed pleased to see me. I left wishing I had seen more of her over the years because she seemed like a good keen girl with some interesting stories to tell. I have this thing, a bit like that show "My name is Earl", I want to visit every girl I think I was mean to at school and explain myself, put it all right. I shudder when I recall my teenage years...
Somehow I made it back to Amie’s flat without my bladder bursting, crashing in a fiery, cartwheeling oblivion or getting stuck in traffic. At one point my GPS whispered the words that are guaranteed to get me panting…”do you want to save 1 hr and 1 minute on this journey to avoid traffic?”
“Oh take me, take me GPS Lady!!!”
After a sleep that felt like being dead I struggled to the pub for a big reunion with all the people from NW London who have forgotten what a dick I really am. About twenty turned up and the more I drank, the better I felt, so I drank more, had a most excellent time and finally made it to bed at 1am.
I am privileged to know such wonderful people…
I somehow managed to wake up with no ill-effects at something o’clock in the morning and on the way to return the hire car I pulled into a café for a proper Full English Breakafst….in England, cooked by English people no less!!
I talked to the guy behind the counter about his tattoos and studiously avoided telling him how much I thought they sucked. There was no real artistry, no actual planning, if he was intending to map out the main points of his life in a sleeve that grew over the years he really needed to get his poop together.
No, it looked more like every time he took too many drugs or found himself in a random seaside holiday resort, wasted on cheap lager and cigarettes, he would suddenly have this brilliant idea for a tattoo. With no overall plan he would go and get a badly-drawn dragon sitting on a mushroom or some other god-awful symbol of Crustines,s such as two Wizards pointing at a tree. (I wish I had been hallucinating at the time as it may all have made sense).
Replete and after a good crap in a toilet painted like a cross between Enid Blyton and Woodstock, I returned the hire car and blagged a lift to Watford Junction Railway Station to make my way to the Intergalactic Headquarters of an organisation allegedly run by Shape-Shifting Lizards from the planet Draco (again I wish I was kidding).
Watford, say that word and roll it’s Britishness around your mouth like a good cigar. Savour it’s very essence of all that is average about English folks and their Ford saloons and 2.4 children. Bask if you will in the very image of what Britain could attain once the Brexit crowd have chased Johnny Foreigner back to that filthy hell-hole known as Europe.
Then open your eyes as the stern-looking Russian lady takes your money and hands you a ticket from “Vatford” to “Wictoria”. Step gaily to one side as a Polish or Lithuanian cleaner reduces your chances of slipping by guiding you around a puddle of her own making. Nod to the shiny African man with his important hat at the barrier and negotiate the purchase of a bottle of water from a very polite Muslim lady who is too pretty to wear a bag over her head and whose eyes glitter from behind the veil with a provocative sexuality that makes one’s parts shiver.
Holding that thought I exited the morning-shadowed station buildings onto a sunlight platform to rest on a thing like a seat that is designed to discourage sitting. I turned my closed eyes to the sun and soaked up its energy like an Iguana and listened…to the Tower of Babel.
The only English language I could hear were my own thoughts, I could have been anywhere in Europe, the world even!!
Looking around I saw a diverse beauty as if a childhood book about other lands had blown open and scattered all the races on God’s good earth about me.
My reverie was broken by a noisy of mob of fat, ugly white people, ugly on the inside too and appearing to come from the bog-garden end of the gene pool.
They made a lot of noise and litter, they injected an ugliness born of generations of xenophobia and caused me to ask myself a profound question…if you kicked out all the foreigners from Britain….would you really want to see more of these types of people?. I fear for the future of the UK, it is neither united nor is it a kingdom...it is just one big Watford...
My train arrived and I tried to board with 3 bags and a mistaken idea that people outside the colonies have manners. I was not allowed on, the crush of humanity would not compress to permit egress. This shocked me as I watched the train depart to the south.
In NZ strangers would have hefted my bags aboard the train and dragged me into its upholstered embrace. There they would have engaged me in conversation, found out my life story and insisted I came back their house for Pavlova and sex with their wife.
Alone and mentally wounded I tried again with the next train and alas, I was crowded out by those who regard helping a fellow traveller to be an admission of weakness and god forbid, the person they helped might engage them in conversation!. Or yet worse, make eye contact!…on public transport!! Oh the horror in their eyes as they, Johnny foreigner and fat ugly white people alike, ran this unseemly scenario through their mind’s eye before turning away…I ignore therefore thou aren’t…
I processed this dilemma and decided that aggression is the better part of valour. The next train arrived and I barged into the crowd, suitcases akimbo and an attitude to the fore. The crowd parted like the dead sea as I mercilessly forced people back into the depths of the carriage, elbows and knees unseating yielding flesh and nobody complained.
It is far better to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous colonial behaviour than to ever even consider speaking out loud on public transport.
I stared at a thin, toxic white man who wouldn’t let me stand upright but rather ignored me as I bent myself into the shape of the curved carriage door. He let his guard down and made eye contact for just long enough for my twinkling hazel eyes to turn dark and fill with menace. Fearing for the future of his family he edged away as if I was wearing Crocs with socks.
At least I was on my way to “Wictoria” now….
We rumbled through the morning sunshine, past back gardens full of rotting crap, graffiti-soiled fences and the rampant growth that envelopes all the detritus of living that the British are wont to lob over their back garden fences or walls, out of sight, out of mind.
Yet there are also those who seem too morbidly attached to their own filth to throw anything away, cars, tricycles, mounds of nappies, tables chairs and old suitcases, it isn’t just one person per mile but possibly everybody who lives by a railway line that feels honour bound to exhibit the symptoms of being a chronic hoarder.
I wondered if they clung on to their dear departed with such fervour and if, behind every set of mouldering net curtains, there was the decaying husk of a granny, an aunt or a parent?
Deeper into the bowels of London we rolled, clank, rattle, clunk and the filth that coats everything within reach of the railways grew thicker and blacker. Maybe this very filth coated the minds of those with dwellings that back onto the railway and as it choked the joy from their lives they just gave up and chucked crap into their gardens because no matter how hard they tried, their Delphiniums came up looking like corpses and the B&Q outdoors furniture, so dazzlingly white in the warehouse, aged and putrefied within days.
My mood was growing sombre and I realised that one of the reasons I had such a bleak outlook as a teenager was that I commuted to college by rail and the miasmic train-filth had suffocated the life from my soul.
I needed a release from all this so I took to examining my fellow travellers, “fellow” probably being too strong a word and I made up a new or supposed life for each of them.
For example:
The Hipster, he sat looking sternly at his brown Brogues, prematurely aged in a factory in Pakistan so they would look like he inherited them off of his Granddad. His beard screamed the hipster dichotomy of “Look at me I’m different but ignore me I am sensitive and I fear your looks may hurt me”. Crazy mixed up lad, here he was with a degree in Post-Modern Art and Business Studies, humming Death Cab for Cutie songs like a mantra and wondering if he will ever get an office with a window and would he have an existential crisis if he did?
The dude with a barely hidden personality disorder, a very nice white shirt and blaring red tie. While outwardly he was very confident and used all the latest business-speak as he yelled into his phone at a supposed minion or drone… he was probably talking to the speaking clock and wet the bed most nights.
Such reverie brought me at last to Euston Station, dusty, dark but nostalgically London. The ozone smell of the elcetric underground trains brought me back to a life I knew I could never cope with again...I have gone native in New Zealand and as such travelling about in a city like London would stifle me.
Deeper into the bowls of the capital I descended, frustrated that half the escalators were closed for repair. I became outraged at how difficult is was to get three bags through an automatic gate that appeared to be designed to remove kneecaps. Most of all I fought down claustrophobia, fear of bombs in waste bins and pickpockets.
By some miracle of faith and karma I emerged back into the light at Viictoria Station, a vast cavern of a place, busy as a Middle Eastern restaurant after Ramadan and just as noisy. A cacophony of announcements, beeping electric things, trains and the constant background rumble of London traffic assaulted my senses.
I struggled to find the correct entrance to locate a cab to take me to Intergalactic HQ. Like a true colonial bumpkin I went the wrong way and nearly got run over by a delivery truck and a gaggle of people who could walk but could only look straight ahead, their world defined by their sense of entitlement and the deadly, crushing fear of arriving somewhere a quarter of a second after somebody else.
Being male I couldn’t ask for directions so I headed upstream through the human tide and looked up high for signs, with arrows and words.
On finding them I made my way down an insignificant part of the station concourse and found myself at the wrong end of a corrugated iron shelter for people to wait for a cab under.
Each cab I approached ushered me further up the line. Like a cow at a stock auction I eventually blundered through a kink at the end to be met by a real “Gor-Blimey” geezer wiv a right pukka Lahndahn accent and not the slightest fecking clue as to where the tiny street that hid the entrance to the HQ was.
“I thought you guys had to do the knowledge before you could drive a cab?” I enquired
“Gawd luv a duck me old china, you’ve got me there gor blimey, chim chiminee cheroo” He blustered without confirming or denying the fact.
He continued “Ang abhart guvnor, I’ll just ask me GPS but it’s been a grumble of a day and I’m right embarrassed abaht you catchin’me aht” . He seemed cheery in the face of conflict and I hoped he wouldn’t burst into an old WW2 drinking song to steel his nerve in the face of disaster.
I booted up the GPS in my phone, entered the top-secret coordinates and after subtly injecting him with a drug to make him forget he ever went there, I directed him to “The Place”.
With a rictus grin and a flash of gold medallion in the V of his unbuttoned shirt collar he grabbed my suitcases, declared his love for Mary Poppins and Margaret Thatcher and reduced the price of the ride because he had learned something today. As the drugs took hold he would completely forget what that was and next time one of our people needed to make this journey he would again not be able to find it and need directions from his fare.
He departed and the short street, flanked into chasm-hood by tall, dirty beige brick buildings with red brick accents became still and quiet, the marvels of stealth technology blanked out the nose of traffic and all sense of population.
An ageing man, dressed as if he belonged here 50 years ago saw me and took pains to disappear as I searched for the sign that would indicate the entrance to “The Place” but it wasn’t there…I phoned “Mr Smith” but no answer.
Fearing that I had failed some form of scrutiny I wandered into a courtyard to see if I could find the door but it was only some department of obscurity building, a place where men who were “something in the city” did that something undisturbed and with no fear of anything except democracy.
Frustrated and overheated I retraced my steps to the place I had seen the mystery man disappear but all I saw was a secretary smoking a cigarette. She was so bound by mind-control that she could not see me.
With the distinct feeling that this was a test I took another look at an anonymous white door and there it was, although I could swear it wasn’t there before, a tiny sign, white with coloured symbols on it. I knew these symbols as did others of my rank in the global hierarchy…I was in! I had passed the test and would be admitted, for the first time ever, into the intergalactic HQ to meet with the Lizards from Draco.
Inside I pressed a buzzer and a female voice asked me who the feck I was. On hearing my name she declared that “Mr Smith” was expecting me, the door buzzed energetically and I entered a dark place.
As my eyes adjusted to the light I found myself in a small room that was divided into other rooms, each performing an essential function in the hierarchy.
I chatted with the dark-skinned and very beautiful lady I had spoken to on the intercom, while we waited for “Mr Smith” to complete his transition into human form and come to take responsibility for me.
Today I would learn some truths, after 21 years with “The Organisation” I was now considered dangerous enough to need re-briefing.
In human form “Mr Smith” was quite convincing, only the way that passing flies grabbed his attention gave away the true nature of his being.
He showed me things and talked about things, many of which were top-secret but I must have caught a whiff of what I gave the cab driver for I can no longer remember which of the things he told me were not to be repeated. So now, two months after the event, as I sit through “ORB Development” meetings I have to just say nothing for fear of revealing too much and having my security status downgraded.
“Mr Smith” took me to lunch at the Bavarian Cricket Club. This is a bizarre establishment that serves German beer on big wooden tables and Australian girls, who pretend to be German but end up sounding Swedish, present the hungry global overlords with a menu that had only Schnitzel on. You can order any kind of Schnitzel, made from the animal of your choice and served with a salad of whatever Waitrose were on the verge of chucking to the pigs that day.
It was a pleasant repast but I knew he was just feeding me up to dull my senses for the main event, trying to make me drop my guard and share my truths with them. Fat chance “Mr Smith”, I’ve been jerked around by professionals, you won’t get me that easily.
Back at “The Place” I was locked in a room with “Mr H” and shown more secret stuff, some if it Slovakian!! He got nothing out of me, he dropped his guard instead and told me his secrets…mwhahahahaaa!
Then came the main event, I was shown around the office and introduced to a phalanx of pretty girls, all who had a job to do of specific intent and all of whom could be bribed with chocolate. They are pawns in the game of global domination, they present an air of distracted whimsy and stiff upper lips but in reality they are, collectively, the forefront of the great game.
As a punishment for stealing their chocolate and being way too convincing with the flirting I was sent to see “Mr Don’t” a man who prior to this had made me shake with fear at the mere mention of his name. He was good, very good. He told me that I should never stop being honest, so I told him I hated his shirt. He told me that he appreciated such feedback because everybody else just agreed with him in case he ate their babies and that didn’t help him to take control of their minds.
I listened through a rising fog of jet-lag as he discussed things of a personal nature that may have been a script designed to make me drop my guard but by now I was having trouble remembering my own name so couldn’t tell him anything important.
“Mr Don’t” passed me on to “Mr Might” who has a disarming way about him, you know he is a double-agent but he makes too much sense for you to hold him to account, my head was whirling…what did these people want from me?
And then it dawned on me…all they wanted was for me to like them and to believe in them (in human form at least) I had to admit, as a bunch of Shapeshifting Lizards intent on world domination they pretty much sucked because I had seen them as human beings and not merely roles within a hierarchy and this was not what they wanted. The way in which I turned the scenario to my advantage was not to tell them…keep the buggers guessing I say…
“Mr H” came for me as I had been summoned by “Mr Smith” to lob the hand grenade of opinion into an otherwise orderly debate about outdoor activities. I did as I was asked and one day the debate might even develop terms of reference and be taken to a plenary session or a workshop,
My time at “The Place” slipped away like a Donald Trump fact when held up to scrutiny and I was genuinely sorry to leave. “Mr H” tried to lure me into a pub so he could get me drunk and download my central cortex but I was too smart for him, I had a train ticket to Brighton and I was gonna use it!!!
The train to Brighton was so full and so badly designed for any travel other than that which involves playing Candy Crush Saga that I had to sit with my big suitcase on my lap and my knees jamming the carry-on under the table. The only upside to this monstrous arrangement was that not everybody was going all the way to Brighton so seats should become available later and a very lovely lady of mysterious cultural origins was able to sit beside me while I lost the use of both legs and one arm.
We rumbled on southwards and when not eyeing up the charming thing beside me I fantasised about living in the isolated patches of trees that sat beside the railway line, alone, armed and on the run from those who would do me harm. It kept me going while the driver moaned to us over the PA about Rail Traffic Control not allowing him to overtake the commuter train that stopped at every station and sometimes in between.
“Mr Smith” had warned me that the trains were fecked and my 1 hour journey to Brighton might take a generation and that the person who arrived at Brighton could well be one of my progeny, who had been conceived, born, raised and married on the Brighton Express.
As it was we were only a light year late and my long-suffering brother was there to greet me with a bemused look as if to say that he couldn’t comprehend why anybody would contemplate travelling by train in the south of England’s green and peasant land.
So, after a night of show and tell there followed a very enjoyable road trip that would have been a lot shorter had our male proclivity for tuning out the female voice not caused us to not actually listen to the GPS lady. We ended up doing a 40 mile loop instead of heading straight to a dot on the map that contained “Mr Over The Top” and a pub built shortly after the biblical flood (which as some would have it would make it 5,000 years old).
“Mr Twig” was supposed to make this rendezvous to share a trove of secrets about one of his ex-girlfriends but his feet were riddled with gangrene and he had to stay in Kent.
After deciding that the 3 of us all held differing opinions on Brexit but were united in our love of a bargain ultralight, we parted ways and my brother and I spent a very enjoyable couple of days revisiting some childhood haunts in Norfolk. We uncovered irrefutable proof that people from Norfolk (unless they contain foreign blood like us) really do have webbed feet and spent time with my wonderfully energetic dad.
I met up with another old female schoolfriend in a pub in Norwich, it was very nice indeed and another male one came out to the one-whore town my brother has his holiday cottage in and helped me remember many things that should probably have been left forgotten Lol!
We spent time with Aunts, Uncles and Cousins, met another of my step fathers and some people we used to drink and party with many hundreds of years ago when we were denizens of the east coast. All too soon it was time start heading south again, to LHR for an Air Canada flight to Vancouver (YVR).
This was facilitated by my Sister and her Jovial husband who barbecued an entire farm in our honour and subjected themselves to the unspeakable horror of a 3am start to beat the daily carnage that is the M25, the UK’s most popular suicide spot for those who like to die in a car or truck.
Being stoic sorts and unfailingly wonderful they dragged us by our hair into the Audi at dark ‘o clock and with one eye on the GPS and it’s amazing ability to spot areas of crap driving and another on the road they got us to LHR in time to have breakfast and nearly cry at having to leave so soon. Staying longer, though it woul dhave brought joy to my heart was not an option. I had to get to YVR to meet the Harlots (I still had their Kilo of cocaine and it was starting to chafe) and TPO had to go back and mend all the boats in New Zealand before high tide.
In the next part I lose my cool because of stupid, flipping, crap stuff about suitcases and TPO ends up in Fiji low on gas….keep it real until then folks…
Last edited by Jafa39; Oct 8, 2016 at 1:32 am
Oct 1, 2016, 9:23 am
#2
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Seattle area
Programs: Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan MVP Gold
Posts: 138
God I have missed your TRs!!! Keep thinking about Thunder Bay like I think of Cookie Crisp cereal - a mystery that you can believe is super cool but which you really don't want to experience in person.
Oct 1, 2016, 5:33 pm
#3
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: YYZ
Programs: Hilton Gold Mariott Gold Aeroplan E25K SAS Gold NEXUS
Posts: 1,308
Ya, uh so my dad used to go play hockey in Thunder Bay (visiting team). They would throw ball bearings at them on the ice. Not at all the idyllic place you consider it to be. I'm sure some parts are nice. Enjoying the irreverence in the report - carry on :-)
May 6, 2017, 1:11 am
#4
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: NZ
Programs: airpoints
Posts: 65
Part 3 is finally ready! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...l#post28275039