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Tuesday 2 September 2014

Time Travelling

I have arrived. The eagle has landed etc etc other metaphors for arriving in a country without the plane bursting in to flames (it happens). The flight was actually OK. I was on one of those Qantas airbuses and it was enormous. I was also out of my skull on a cocktail of prescription (not necessarily my prescriptions) drugs which made the whole thing a lot more palatable. I was even relaxed enough to take a quick nap on the floor of Dubai airport. Never let it be said I don’t travel in style.

I had somehow managed to get in an early boarding row so was one of the first on the enormous plane. As it filled up the seats next to me remained empty and so I’d managed to convince myself that I was going to have a whole row of seats to myself. I was of course being ridiculous. This never happens. You are always rammed in and convince yourself that the flight is full then on a wander to the toilet you see about 20 rows of seats that have one person stretched out along all three seats. Your reaction to seeing this varies depending on whereabouts in the flight you are. Early on you tend to think “Oh I wonder how they managed that”. Later on “I’m going to wake them up and ask them how they did that and then tell them that it would be nice if they shared their good fortune around and we all took turns at sleeping horizontally”. 14 hours in and you are standing over them weeping.

The empty seats next to me were filled about 2 seconds before the doors closed. They were filled by a strange couple who were having a domestic. They were terrifying. I stood up to let her in and the first/only thing she said was ‘is this all your stuff?’. This was in reference to the full up over head locker. I replied that my bag was under the seat in front. She ignored me and got in her seat, her scary husband sat next to her and we all sat in silence. I listened to the people behind me bond, they were practically arranging to come to each other weddings. I even began to envy the people sat next to the child going mental. Then scary man broke the silence. By calling his wife an f***ing b***h. Her response to this was to hand him an inflight magazine and say ‘Oh look we went there’. I shut my eyes and listened to him detail the plans for their divorce, whilst she smiled and laughed as if she was at a dinner party. Luckily at that point my fake sleep turned into real sleep and I was spared their weirdness. When I woke up they had their arms round each other and were watching the Big Bang Theory. They then started whispering sweet nothings to each other. I pretended to sleep again.
I could only assume they were one of those ghastly couples who thrive on tension and make up sex. You’ll be as thrilled as I was to hear they were in the same seats all the way to Sydney.

I had planned to try and sleep at the correct times so that I would arrive early morning in Sydney and then power through till the evening. Of course my plans failed and I awoke at about 11pm Thursday night all ready for a 5-30am landing. I prepared myself for jetlag/death.  I’ve only ever had jetlag badly twice. Once when I actually thought I was going to die and the other slightly more amusing version where I couldn’t stay awake. I would be mid sentence and then wake up three hours later glued to the carpet by my own drool. This continued for a week. The only thing that made it more amusing was that the two people I was living with got exactly the same thing. At any given moment there was the chance that one of us would just collapse in a heap and pass out for a couple of days.


This time I got a strange kind of jet lag. The type where I decided that I was a higher evolved human. I managed to not only change time zones but also evolutionary stages. I got to a point where I didn’t need sleep or food. Inevitably this had to come to an end and it did in spectacular style on Sunday evening. I assumed I was out of the danger zone of jetlag and was enjoying my new evolutionary life as a thetan and so decided that I would try out a church in the city for it’s Sunday evening service. I think it was nice. I think I spoke to people. I got hit by the truck of tiredness about 10 seconds in to the service. I had to keep pretending to pray so I could shut my eyes. Then I had to keep jerking myself awake so I didn’t go in to a coma and fall off my chair. I got an attack of the involuntary head dips. Where you think you’re fine and then suddenly your head jerks back up and you realise it’s slowly been sinking towards your knees. I think I was drooling. I realised that I wasn’t a thetan and I was also very, very cold. I got home somehow and put on all the clothes I own, borrowed a onesie and went to bed, shivering. Only to wake up at 3am boiling. Oh jet lag you cruel mistress. 

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