Lost Weekend Part Deux

Last Sunday I blogged about my Lost Weekend. It was a moan really, about how I'd been too frightened to go to my friends birthday party because we had some snow, which had frozen and become dangerous to drive on.

In case you didn't read it, or didn't retain the information therein (and why would you?) I was sad to have missed it because it was an 80's themed party, and I had my costume ready.  I never have a costume ready.

I can't even think about the last time we went to a costume party without shuddering.
It was about eleven years ago. I was wearing a horrific horrendous devil costume, made of nasty polyester, and His Nibs waited for his brother to get dressed up in drag, then put on his brother's clothes and went as him.

It's the kind of thing we don't really get into the swing of, in our house.  That, and dressy up affairs.  To be honest, we usually only go to places where I don't have to wear a dress, he doesn't have to wear a tie, and neither of us has to visit a costume shop.

So I was quite looking forward to this one.

It turns out it was a fantastic party.  For the first hour, as people arrived, the music was TV theme tunes of the eighties.  I'd love that, I'm a bit nerdy about things like TV theme tunes.

One guest came as Shergar, and another as Inspector Gadget.  There was a Boy George, a Madonna, (the Like a Virgin years), and a Michael Jackson. Part of whose costume was his wife's red leather jacket.  No Cureheads were present, so I would have been quite original. 

The treats included pina colada cupcakes, and strawberry daiquiri cupcakes.  They had rum in them, and anyone who has spoken to me since my holiday in Nicaragua knows that I have a new found fondness for rum.

Best of all, the tables had large bowls of retro sweets on them.  There was flying saucers, Wham Bars, sherbet fountains, Frosties, and Love Hearts.

It would have been worth risking life and limb for that bit alone.

The cake was a rubik's cube, as was the mother of the birthday girl. 

By that I don't mean, of course, that she was wearing a massive cardboard box around her middle, it was a far more dignified outfit, with a rubik cube inspired dress, handbag, and hairpiece.  This picture isn't the Mammy of the birthday girl, but the outfit is the same.

 



The music was excellent, I'm told.  Not the usual mish mash of anything that reached the top ten in that decade.  The playlist was worked on with gusto for some nights in advance by a man with music in his heart and his soul, and only the best got through.

All in all I was still feeling a bit moany about missing all the fun.  So today I started lamenting my bad luck to a friend of mine.

She clarified with me that we'd had an inch of snow, covered by a thick layer of ice, and that I couldn't go to a party.  I could, however, drink whatever was available in my house, eat, sit by the fire and wear flanelette pyjamas, and watch dvds.

Yes, I had to concede, she was correct.

Then she told me about her partner's Saturday.

Being a good father, he had taken his son and a friend up the Wicklow mountains, where they were going to ride around on motor bikes, or scrambler bikes, or something else boyish.

Without any warning, it started to snow. This being the Wicklow mountains, there was a complete white out and within minutes the poor boys couldn't see ten feet in front of them .

Sadly enough, the two fourteen year olds were off on their bikes at this stage, so the unfortunate father had to run around panicking and shouting and trying to find them.  Which he did, eventually.

After a little while, when it became obvious that the snow wasn't going to stop, and that in fact the roads had become somewhat impassable, he rang my friend, his loving partner, for rescue.

She reasoned, correctly in my opinion, that if he couldn't drive down the mountain, it was probably unsafe for her to drive up it.
His father became involved, and apparently rang the Gardai for advice.
I think there was a few steps in between, but suffice it to say that Mountain Rescue became involved.

But Mountain Rescue were having a busy night.  Before they could rescue our adventurers, they had to save a coachful of tourists who were stuck at the Sally Gap.
Mountain Rescue have a jeep, and had to bring the tourists to safety four at a time.  A whole coachload of them. 
I won't say where these tourists might have been from, but it was a place where they don't get much snow. So the tourists kept getting off the bus and wandering off, without appropriate protective clothing I might add, and taking photos of snow on branches, and snow on rocks, and snow in general.  It was a good while before the rescuers could satisfy themselves that they had all been rounded up and brought to safety.

Four hours, our boys waited.  Four hours up a snowy mountain, waiting for rescue, frozen, hungry and trying not to get irritated with each other in the confines of one car.

They got down the mountain eventually, although he had to leave his beloved car behind and hope it would still be there, and in one piece, when he got it back.
They were dropped off in Roundwood, then they had a further wait for a lift back to their homes. 

Where our hero was met by a hysterical girlfriend who was so amused at him being brought to safety by Mountain Rescue that she hadn't even got a vat of steaming homemade soup ready for them.  Actually, she hadn't even boiled the kettle.

There's always someone worse off than yourself, they say.

The Lost Weekend

I was to be a social butterfly this weekend.  On Friday I attended a book launch for an anthology of stories by some writing student colleagues of mine.

For some reason, I thought this event was to begin at 8:30.  It turned out that it was to begin at 8.  I arrived home from work sometime around seven fifteen and decided that feck it, I’d put on a decent top and even a bit of makeup and my dangly earrings, and make the effort in general. 

I used my brand new eye makeup, which comes with full instructions on how to make your eyes "pop".  I fecked it up, of course, but at least I tried.

I even used hairspray.  A rare enough occurrence for me.  My hair is so difficult that I usually slather it with expensive conditioners, try not to blow dry it too often, straighten it, beg it to behave itself, whisper my wishes to the Gods of the crazy hair, and leave it to its own devices.

 It always ends up doing what it likes, and sometimes hairspray actually makes it easier for it to go mental, because when it stands out from my head, or curls up, or whatever other mischief it is making that day, the hairspray seems to hold it in its new position.

Anyway, it turned out that the book launch started at eight o’clock.  When my friends arrived to collect me, I hadn’t even put my mascara on.  I’d lost half an hour.  The half hour in which I was to have something to eat.

That wouldn’t have been too bad in itself, had we not decided to go for a drink after the readings.  I had two large drinks in a very short time, and I admit it, I got a bit giddy.  I’m a disgrace to my bloodline, I really am.  Anyway, after the drinks, I insisted that we couldn’t go home without our midnight chips.

Midnight chips, as I’m sure you know, are the chips you eat when you’ve had a few drinks, for no other reason than you’ve been drinking, and which you normally don’t finish, having had dinner before you go out.  But I was starving. We went to the nearest chipper, and I had chips and a chicken fillet burger.  This chipper was previously untested by my friends and I, and after my two drinks I decided that anyone with such a smiley face as the man who served me had to care about hygiene, and food poisoning and what have you, and chanced it.

That was a mistake.  On Saturday morning I was quite green around the gills.   Not violently sick as such, just generally unwell. 

I didn’t notice when His Nibs woke me first, before eight o’clock in the pigging morning, because I was so busy telling him to belt up.  I thought he was sleep talking.  He kept saying I was being attacked. 
He got so offended when I swore at him and insisted that he leave me alone that he decided not to fill me in on what was happening, that my laptop had contracted a much more serious illness than mine. 

An illness that would effectively eat up its usefulness, destroy internet access, demand that I buy some extremely dodgy non-existent software to repair same, and then steal our credit card details and rob us blind for months to come.

He waited until I woke of natural causes, quite late in the day, to fill me in.

Thank God he has a laptop too, so I was able to look all this up before I did anything.  It took hours to sort out, and we had to buy some proper software to do so.  And all the time I was giving out, and panicking because every word I’ve ever written is on the laptop, including some pieces I have to send to my current writing teacher today, and swallowing nausea. 

I was supposed to spend Saturday afternoon doing a final edit and printing out a number of pieces of writing for some upcoming competitions.  I like to enter writing competitions, if only because I think that some day they'll pity me and give me a prize for effort and persistence.

Eventually the laptop and I both recovered, and I decided that I would make it to my next social engagement.

My friend was having a 40^th birthday party, and the theme was the 1980’s.  I had watched, bemused, as the ladies attending bought colourful stilettoes, and lace fingerless gloves, and legwarmers, and boob tubes and little skirts, and decided that I couldn’t go.  I just can’t compete with skinny ladies in dresses.

Inspiration struck, however.  I’d go as a Curehead.  There were quite a few of them around in the 80’s, if I remember rightly, and some of them not a million miles away from my own homestead. 

 

I bought some leggings, and some droppy, droopy black clothes and black nail varnish and eye makeup and bright red lipstick.  Diva red, in fact, a colour I don’t usually bother at all.  I’d backcomb my hair, and I’d be all set.  The beauty of it was that I was wearing the whole ensemble with flat boots, and was looking forward to partying the night away in the most comfortable costume ever.

Once I decided I was definitely well enough to make the drive to Dublin for the party, I became re-energised.  Only to discover that it was snowing.  Properly snowing, fat white flakes that sat on my car and collected, and “stuck” as we like to say in Ireland.

Of all the talents I don’t possess, driving in adverse conditions is the biggest one.  I once drove my car to the train station in the snow, in an effort to get to work.  By the time I got to the station, and rang my boss to tell her the stupid signals had frozen and there was no train and I was too cowardly to keep driving, I was more or less in tears.  I hadn't driven the car to the station.  Not in any real sense.  I'd just sat in the drivers seat, white faced and terrified, while the car sort of danced around the road of its own accord.

I just can’t work it out.  It’s like driving in floods.  I can never remember if the car should be in high or low gear, if you’re supposed to steer into or out of skids, and what the feck that means anyway.  Surely if your car is in a skid you can’t really steer it at all?

I began to fear for my night out.  And when the snow finally stopped, and froze solid, so that there was a layer of hard ice on it, I had to give up the ghost.  I was going nowhere.  I’m far too much of a gom to take to roads in that condition.  It could only end in tears and insurance claims.

I was to stay with a great friend last night.  I see her reasonably often, but her small daughter almost never.  This little girl is feisty and wilful and funny, and I want to bribe her into loving me.  I was looking forward to it.  And obviously I didn’t get to go there either.

I’ll probably never dress up as a Curehead now.  Instead of going out for lunch with the lovely ladies today I haven't even gotten dressed yet. 

We haven’t had Sky since before we went on our holidays last month, so I can’t even watch stupid weekend television to comfort myself.   Seeing what Judge Judy’s guests are suing each other over usually makes me feel better about my life. 

I suppose this could be called a Lost Weekend.

Dear Tesco

You know the way you have self-service tills for independent types, and tills for wheelchair users, and certain tills where you serve alcohol?  Do you think it would be possible to set up a special till for stupid people as well?

It would save normal customers more time than you’d believe, and you know you’re supposed to care more about your customer’s happiness than anything else.



I didn’t expect to have much difficulty today.  I had a perfectly simple list. Coffee, milk, bread, dog biscuits (more important in our house, than human food.  Oscar’s been melancholy since Monday) and maybe even some fruit.  I've been feeling bad about my diet recently. 

I also thought maybe buying some fruit might stop His Nibs from using the fruit bowl as a door stop, or as a weight to hold the huge bag of dog food closed.

It didn’t take long to get these simple items into a basket.  I needed collect the car, and collect His Nibs from work at five thirty.  At ten past five I got to the checkout.

I’m not in the habit of using your self service checkouts.  I’ve tried, but to be honest, I’ve never had a happy experience there.

It seems that no matter what I do, it shouts at me and refuses to be reasonable. I don’t like anything that I can’t shout back at when it shouts at me.

If I put my handbag down beside the till it assumes I have stolen something handbag weight, like, I assume, a large head of cabbage.

“Unidentified item in the bagging area” it screeches.  I stand there torn, I never know whether to look mortified and ashamed, or to go for defiant and offended by the implication that I might be trying to shoplift a cabbage.

I never take the stuff off the “bagging area” fast enough, so the damn thing starts shouting at me again.  Handbag on the floor, slightly panicky, rushing to get everything out of the packing area and into the bag.  Now I really looked like a shoplifter, stuffing things into the bag.

Why is this awful system sold to us as being for our benefit?  In my experience, the average shopper, and by that I mean me, takes far longer to put through a few bits of shopping than it does one of your staff.

So today I decided I’d go for the human touch, and queued at a till. 

I chose carefully.  It’s usually well worth the few seconds it takes to size up the customers, the amount of shopping they have, the assistant, whether he or she looks alive, and so forth.

I was in your shop a few days ago, and I may as well tell you, the woman who served me seemed a bit bonkers.  She shouted at me  to give her my Clubcard, despite my telling her that I didn't have one,  and told me not to be so ridiculous when I said I didn’t need a bag.  I was quite frightened, actually.

So I took the till next to hers today.

The first problem was the boys being served when I arrived at the till.  Five students, from what I could see.  Four of them bought a box of Budweiser each, and the fifth had a bottle of rum.

Each of them were asked for ID, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear.  And each of them looked surprised to be asked, despite the repetitive nature of the request, and would fumble about in his rucksack for a couple of minutes, eventually drag out his wallet, ask his friends whether he looked less than eighteen, and then show his driving licence.

Your staff member stared at each driving licence as if he’d never seen one before. It took forever, I swear.  I wanted to start grabbing the licences myself, and deciding whether they should be served.  I would have refused them all.

Next in the queue was a woman with a basket full of shopping.  Having so much time to look around, and being a nosey cow, I had an in depth knowledge of the contents of her basket before the assistant even turned to her.  I’d seen the fresh soup, and I knew for certain that it was on special, three for two.  And yet she didn’t seem to know, having taken two from the fridge.  I knew that she would find this out, and would wander off to get her free soup in the middle of being served, and I was right.  I swear, battles have been won and lost in less time than it took this woman to arrive back at the till.  And when she did, she had chosen pea and ham soup.  Eugh.

Then, in fairness,  there was a man with two small items, who seemed like a patient sort.  Or at least he didn’t start sighing and rolling his eyes, and eventually stamping his feet, like I did.

Obviously, there was the customer who seemed to have no idea she’d be expected to pay until she was asked for the money.  Then she started arsing about, wondering whether she had cash, trying to decide which card to use, I wanted to kill her.

After an eternity, finally, I was served. 

Our place of work is directly across the street from your shop.  And yet I didn’t get there until after 5:45.  I’ll remind you, I went to the checkout at ten past five.

Every single day, I go to collect the car and am at the door of the office a maximum of seven minutes later.  I’ll let you do the maths.

I know it’s not your fault that some of your customers seem to be too thick to queue up with the rest of us without messing up the whole system. 

I’m just making a suggestion.

Losing Jewellery

I had a very confusing experience the other day. 

I decided to wander around Jervis Street to look for some earrings.  Not in jewellers shops, you understand, I’m not in the market for fancy and expensive stuff. 

No, I was doing the trawl around the clothes shops and looking at their jewellery stands.  I’m fond of dangly and colourful earrings that I can’t really carry off.  I buy them and put them in my earring box and try them on every now and then.  Then I decide that they make me look demented and put them back in the box. 
And go to work with empty ears, or just studs which I have deemed appropriate for the office.

Still, they’re nice to have.  Maybe some day I’ll wake up slim of jaw and long of neck with shiny glossy locks that just beg for swingy earrings.  Until then, I'll just admire them in their little box.

I didn’t buy anything.  All the earrings were either mental colours, or big chandeliers like Beyoncé can, and does, wear, or were clearly for clubbers.  Absolutely enormous crosses, that would have come down past my shoulders, stunted of neck as I am.   I’d chosen the wrong shops, obviously.

But during the course of my futile expedition I discovered something. 

Not only have I now reached the point where I don’t understand fashion or clothes, and when I wore almost everything in the shops the first time around, but jewellery has now completely bamboozled me as well.

Once again, I’m forced into a position where I sound a hundred years old.  But in my day (yes, that old chestnut “in my day” – did I ever think the day would come when I actually thought those words, not to say said them aloud?) jewellery comprised necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings.  You could go a bit mental, if you wanted to express yourself when I was a teenager, and wear a sort of shoelace instead of a chain with something on it around your neck, but you still knew it was a necklace.  Grunge's answer to jewellery.

For the first time in my life, yesterday I found myself picking things off the costume jewellery stands of high street stores, and asking myself what on earth it was that I was looking at.

I managed to get past the bars that go through pierced belly buttons, a few years ago, without having to publicise my ignorance.  I’ve never been in the market for a pierced belly button, for a couple of reasons.  One, nobody in their right mind would ever want to see my belly button, so adorning it is foolish and wasteful, and two, I’m never a hundred per cent certain that if I got my navel pierced or punctured in any way, my substantial tummy wouldn’t explode like an inflated balloon, since that’s what it looks like.

So it wasn't those bars for the navel that were confusing me.

But the first thing I picked up was a mystery.  It was an ear cuff, an item with which I am familiar, but there were a huge number of chains dangling out of it.  And the actual cuff part was massive as well, it must have been designed to cover the edge of the whole ear.
A few years ago, as far as I know, the chain would have connected to an earring, so that the chain just ran along the length of the ear.  Now, there are about ten chains, all dangling as far as the shoulder.

Then I picked up an utterly bewildering item, two small fake gold rings, again joined together by a chain.  Presumably, to be worn on the same hand.  Effectively shackling the wearer’s fingers together.  Why would anyone want to tie their own fingers together?

I thought I was keeping up when I understood the cuff and ring with a chain running between them, and then of course they had to go and make them even more complicated.

And those funny collars you buy to attach to your top? You know the ones, they’re always lacy or heavy with fake pearls?  I have a young friend who wears them, and looks fabulous and trendy, and yet professional. 

I know that if I bought one, I’d have it half on, half hanging down the back of my top before I got into the office.  I have absolutely no idea how they work.

Knuckle dusters are another thing.  I presume they're not called knuckle dusters, but you know what I mean, about three rings stuck together with a big yoke across all three, so it goes right across the width of the hand.



I lost clothes years ago, then shoes, when the high platform stilettoes came in.  Now jewellery is gone.  I only have handbags left.  I hope they don’t start messing with them.

Dear Saint Valentine

 

Today is your big day. 
A day which, I cannot help but notice, is supposed be a celebration, and make us buy presents and cards, not unlike certain other festive days, but which  doesn’t offer the benefit of a day off work.   

I’m afraid it’s a celebration that has long been banned in our house.  We had to ban it,  because every year it ended up in one person getting into a sulk.  And it was almost always me.

The year before we banned Valentine’s Day, many, many years ago now, when we still lived in the big smoke, I completely ignored your special day.  At the last minute, as I walked to the bus stop, I changed my mind, did a quick pit-stop in the nearest shop, and bought a card that I hoped would make His Nibs smile. 

In those days, he was always home before me, simply because he has always been far better at getting up in the morning and going to work than I have.  In our city-based days, I liked to get up as late as possible, thrash myself around the flat for a few minutes panicking, and run to work at the last second. 

Not surprisingly, where I work, we are not encouraged to arrive and leave when we like, and if I arrive to work late, I get to stay late and make up the time. 

So on this particular Valentine’s Day I was heading home reasonably late.  I wasn’t worried about missing a bit of our Valentine’s night, because neither His Nibs nor I are inclined toward romance. 

I arrived in the door of our flat, the lights were on so I knew His Nibs was home.  When I opened the door, I was almost hit in the jaw by a large bunch of flowers.  It was always the same with us.  I think that the previous year was when I bought him the lovely designer aftershave, and he had absolutely no idea it was Valentine’s Day. 

His Nibs obviously hadn’t forgotten the sulk I went into the previous year, and was so eager to make up for it, that he leapt toward the door with his arms full of flowers the second he heard my key in the lock.

I was standing there hoping that there was something in my handbag that would serve as a present equivalent to a large bouquet of flowers, when the card was produced.
It was not a massive horrible padded one or anything, but it was definitely very romantic.  I read it carefully, touched, of course, but at the same time thinking of books, CDs etc I had recently bought wondering if I could pass any of them off as a present for him.  I came up with nothing. 

And eventually I couldn’t put it off any longer.  I pulled his card out of my bag.  The inside was more or less indecipherable, because I had written it on a moving bus.  The outside, sadly, had glitter dripping off it, had a cartoon character on the front, and had the unfortunate Valentine’s message “Show me your sausage, big boy!”

His Nibs looked at it, tried to smile bravely, and completely failed to hide his true emotions.

His true emotions couldn’t have been clearer, actually, and very much leaned toward
 
“I can’t believe all the giving out you did last year, not to mention all the threats, and now you turn up this year with this shite” 

I apologised, and told him I had assumed we were giving up on all this caper after last years’ drama, but that I was happy to make him a nice dinner to make up for it. 

Sadly, all we had that could possibly constitute a dinner was tuna and pasta and the type of sauce that comes in a packet, and has to be mixed with milk.  His Nibs is not fond of tuna.  Not fond at all.  So we spent Valentine’s night sitting there, him pushing tuna around his plate and trying not to look as sulky as he felt, me hiding behind the not insubstantial flowers that had been given pride of place on the table, deeply ashamed.

The following morning we decided that Valentine’s Day is a complete load of old nonsense and that we were now finished with it forever, we’d suffered enough.

Just to be sure there’d be no confusion, a couple of years later, when Valentine’s Day fell on a Sunday, I asked His Nibs, a week in advance, whether it was safe for me to completely ignore it, or whether he would, if I did that, turn up with a card.  He answered, quite gamely I thought, that he was happy to buy a card if I was.  So I said

“Well I’m not, actually, if you’re leaving it up to me I think we should pretend it isn’t happening. I think we’ve disappointed each other quite enough with Valentine’s cards over the years, don’t you?”

He agreed, very quickly. 

During that week, it came to my attention that a certain shop was doing one of those specials, twice the usual price, obviously, but with lovely and romantic food such as scallops and rack of lamb on offer, in honour of Valentine’s Day.  We don’t get many scallops around our way, so I went home on the Thursday night and suggested to His Nibs that we partake of the offer, simply because it was there.  He agreed.  The trouble started when we started to discuss which of us would be in charge of preparing the three course feast, for just the pair of us, in our own kitchen, on a Sunday afternoon, when the whole country is awash with tasty pub lunches. 

We both knew neither of us would be bothered, once the weekend rolled around.  So we decided against that as well.  On Saturday evening, just to be sure I wasn’t caught on the hop, I asked him plainly whether he had purchased a card. 

He was obviously confused by all the “will we, won’t we” we’d been doing, and looked very much like a rabbit caught in the headlights.  To put him out of his misery I told him that that year’s agreed protocol was that there was to be no cards, but that I just thought I’d check. 

He relaxed, and offered to go and collect a Chinese, and our Valentine’s celebrations were complete.

I think we’ll leave our arrangement as it is.  I think we’ll leave it to the teenagers, they seem to like it.  They spend the rest of their lives in a well of black misery, it’s nice that they get to come out once a year and swap horrible teddy bears and snog each other in full view of everybody. 

I think we should all just try to be nice to each other.  Even if some of us feel like beating him up with his own boots which he’s left in the middle of the kitchen floor again.

Yours

A Lapsed Romantic





 

Dear U.S. Immigration

I suppose I should apologise, on behalf of His Nibs.  He was quite the rudey pants the other day.

He’s not going to apologise himself, because he is stubborn, so I’m doing it on his behalf.  Just because you were only doing your job, and in fairness you were perfectly nice to him.  For a while, anyway.

I don’t know why he was so hot headed.  I suppose it’s because the day felt rather longer than it needed to.  After all, we’d been in Managua Airport four hours before our flight. 
His Nibs had been in charge of the booking of the taxi etc., my not having a word of Spanish.

I knew it was booked for five o’clock in the morning, but to be honest I’m past arguing with him about these little things.  He’s been in Nicaragua three times before, I’ve never been.  I thought that maybe he knew something that I didn't about Managua airport.  Like that it takes forever to get through security.  

I was fascinated to see that they search every single piece of cabin luggage by hand, but not until after they let you through the gate.  I wish His Nibs had told me.  I might have been more careful to put dignified and classy items in there.  If I'd had any dignified or classy items.  A two week holiday with too much luggage basically meant that they ended up rifling through my dirty laundry.

After four hours sitting around one airport, we spent four hours flying to another one.  Then, when His Nibs happened upon you, we were facing another four hour wait before our eight hour flight home.

You happened to catch him at a very bad moment.         

I tried to stop him, I promise I did.  I told him to stop his nonsense when we were waiting in the queue to meet you. 

When he started complaining about how over the top American security is, especially since we were only in transit, and weren’t even going to get access to our luggage, I told him to belt up.  It's not as if it's one of those things that courteous complaints are going to change now, is it?

When he said that the man handling our queue, who turned out to be you, was deliberately taking ages to deal with each person, I told him that you were just doing your job.  I tried to stand up for you.  And in fairness he was being a complete and utter narky pants.

I think I was doing quite well to be so nice to him, actually.  It's not as if I didn't have my own problems, the mosquitoes having chewed the ankles off me the night before.  There's no dignity in standing in a queue scratching the legs off yourself, so I was dealing with his royal crankiness with one ear, while my eyes watered, and my knees sort of trembled involuntarily as I tried to ignore the bites.

When we eventually got to the top of the queue, and you asked the questions about where we’d been and how long we’d stayed, and the purpose of our visit, and he said absolutely nothing, I answered up, good and loud and clear.  I had all our documents ready to hand over, including our customs declaration.

I thought you were rather handsome, actually.  But I didn’t tell His Nibs that.  Not after losing the run of myself on our last night and kissing lots of boys.  Harmlessly, of course.  Not snogging them.  Just kissing them goodbye.  Lots of them. And lots of times. 

I thought it might be a bit soon to start admiring you too.  He'd been very laid back about the drunken kissing, but sober and in the middle of the day, I don't think he would have been in the mood for it.

Anyway, he was sort of growling at you.  I really don’t know why, it's very unlike him.  He'd spent the previous fortnight waffling the ears off anyone who'd let him, regardless of nationality, in a way that some might describe as over friendly.  I don’t know why he took a turn against your entire nation as soon as he set foot off the plane.

Happily, I know why he was so weirdly aggressive when you asked him to give his fingerprints, slamming his fingers down on the reader, and raising his eyebrows at you narkily. Which we know is part of the immigration process.  But he feels that as a non criminal he shouldn’t have to give his fingerprints, just to wait in transit for another plane.

But he definitely shouldn’t have snapped at me when I reminded him to look into the camera.  I didn’t like that one bit. 

Also, he probably shouldn’t have walked away as soon as you said “You’re done” when you got the iris and fingerprint analysis.  After all, weren't you armed?

When you asked me what his problem was, I didn’t really know what to say.  So I told you the truth.

“I’ve no real idea” I told you.  “I think flying makes him grumpy.”

“Excuse me sir” you called out to him.  I couldn’t help noticing that as full of bravado as he was, he hadn’t gone far.

You beckoned him back.

“Sir, do you have a problem?”

“No” he said cheekily “but if we’re finished here I’m supposed to move on, aren’t I?”

“Not without your documents, sir, no” you said, waving his passport in front of him.

No answer to that, I noticed.

"How long are you going to be in this airport before your transit flight?”

No answer from our cheeky pup. So I answered for him “four hours.” 
I admit I tried to make it sound like the saddest two words ever.

The mini lecture you gave him was so effective, that I think he felt bad.  You told him to try to relax and enjoy the time, have some coffee, or a drink, or whatever.  Then you told him to be nice to his wife, because four hours would be a long time for us to be together if we were going to be fighting. 

I like boys who tell my husband to be nice to me, very much indeed.  Just so you know.  Thanks for that.

Anyway, I’m hoping he’ll behave better next time.  Just for convenience sake, you understand.  It's definitely not because I disagree with everything he said.

 

 

 

Upgrade Downgrade

I read today that a woman flying in premium class from JFK in New York to San Diego became so enraged when an economy passenger was upgraded to the seat beside her that she physically assaulted the stewardess and the plane had to be diverted to Denver for some hours, where she was met by law enforcement officers.

The television screen at the economy passengers seat wasn’t working.  He wanted to watch the inflight movie, I suppose, and complained to the stewardess.  So she got him a seat in premium class.

There is no mention in the report of this economy class passenger being a serial killer, or a nose picker, or in any way offensive.  But the woman he was put sitting beside was enraged because this man had paid less fare than her, so she thought it was unfair that he could sit beside her.

I assume that she began by verbalising her anger, but when she got nowhere she “became physical” with the stewardess.  How mad is that?

Isn’t being upgraded sort of like winning a raffle?  Some people are lucky, some aren’t.

If you went on a holiday that you’d worked hard to pay for and found out that the people in the room next door won the holiday, would you go bananas?

His Nibs and I were almost upgraded once.  Almost.

We were in Bangkok airport, and were to fly to Istanbul, where we would have a four hour stopover.  His Nibs began an absolutely random conversation, as he does all the time, this time with the security guard who was keeping an eye on all of us ragamuffins in the queue for cattle class.  He told him that he (His Nibs) is a security man too, and hey presto, that was enough.

The security man went up to the counter, whispered a bit to the woman at the desk, and we were called, like celebrities, out of the queue, and led straight to the Business Class desk.  I was beside myself. This had never ever happened us before.  I couldn’t believe it.  His Nibs hissed at me a bit to try to act cool, as if were in the habit of going left at the door of jumbo jets, instead of being shoved down into the seats created for midgets that make up economy.

When the woman smiled at us, and took our tickets, I tried not to dance on the spot.  I should have known this would never come to pass.  For once in my life a sort of natural optimism had overtaken me.

She was just about to issue us our business class boarding passes, I’m sure of it, when her face fell. 

“I’m so sorry” she told us “your flight is delayed for six hours.  We hope this won’t cause you any inconvenience.”

I was too disappointed to speak.  His Nibs had to take over.  Normally, when something even slightly unpleasant like this happens, I step in and start using my “trying to be posh” voice.  It doesn’t get us anywhere, but it makes me feel better.

I was half sobbing though, so His Nibs had to explain that it was quite inconvenient, actually, since we were on our way to Dublin and our stopover was only four hours, so a six hour delay could get a bit messy.

The woman kindly promised to find us a flight to Dublin.  And she did.  Via Copenhagen.  Where we were given two seats in Super Economy.  I didn’t even know Super Economy existed.  And if I had I probably would have assumed that it referred to a sort of upgraded economy, where each person actually gets enough room to sit down.  No.  Super Economy is the opposite.  Where they usually put three seats, there was four.  And joy of joys, we were put beside a couple with a small  and incredibly grumpy baby.  Who roared his head off from Bangkok to Copenhagen. 

A ten hour flight, plus the hour we circled over Bangkok immediately after takeoff, for some inexplicable reason waiting to dump fuel.  Both time wasting and poisonous to the environment, I would have thought.  However, that’s not the point.

And that hour of messing about meant I had to shout a lot in my posh voice in Copenhagen, where the doors to the Dublin flight were just being closed when we arrived at the gate.

The great tragedy of the story, for me, is that I have a bad feeling that that was it, our one chance.  We’ve cashed in our upgrade chips, so to speak, and I don’t believe for a second that it will happen again.

If by some joyous chance it does, I would appreciate the person who gets to sit beside us on our upgraded flight to shut their mouth and be happy for something nice happening to a stranger.  Your flight cost what it cost, it shouldn’t matter a feck to you what the person beside you paid.  I promise to be good, and not to stink, or pick my nose, or act common.  I’ll probably be too intimidated. 

Apparently the woman isn't to face any criminal charges.  After delaying a flight for several hours, "getting physical" with a stewardess and being a complete bitch.
Makes you wonder about us eejits getting fined for not paying our M50 toll on time, doesn't it?