Back in about June, I went to book my tickets to London and discovered that Qantas was in the process of changing their daily flight from Melbourne to London. Instead of leaving at like 3pm, it was moving to an 11pm departure. This seemed pretty much perfect for me, because I was planning on working on the 8th September and then flying out on the 9th. But now? I could work on the 8th AND fly out on the 8th! GENIUS.
Except then the 8th September actually arrived, and it suddenly seemed like not such a fabulous idea...
It probably didn't help that the day didn't get off to a great start - I got up to discover that I hadn't successfully cancelled our food delivery as I'd thought, and that there was a bag sitting on the front doorstep containing four litres of milk, a loaf of bread, 500g of beef mince, and a packet of cheese slices. Luckily, everything except the milk could go in the freezer or survive unopened until I got home, but I had to cart the stupid milk to work with me. And it turns out that four litres of milk is surprisingly heavy...
Work, thankfully, went smoothly. Although I feel like this contextless post-it note that I found on the floor summed up my feelings about the day quite well:
After work, I raced home, spent half an hour on the phone to Little Miss A while she did her reading, watered the gardens (of course Melbourne would experience flash floods the following day, meaning that I could have saved myself 45 minutes of watering. SIGH.), finished packing, showered, realised I was going to miss the tram, frantically Googled the bus timetable, ran out the door with my suitcase, ran back when I realised I'd left my laptop cord behind, shoved the cord into my backpack while attempting to lock the front door, ran to the bus stop (which, thankfully, is outside the house next door), and spent the next five minutes wondering if I'd missed the bus or not. Thankfully, I hadn't.
Once on the bus, I promptly began panicking that I'd left 15,000 things behind (I hadn't) and that I'd forgotten to put the alarm on (I hadn't). I got to the train station without any issues, and reorganised my backpack while waiting for the train. Once in the city, it was off to the airport bus. Luckily, there weren't many people heading that way, so I could practice standing on the right of the escalator in preparation for the Tube.
Eventually, I made it to the airport and checked in without any issues. Then I headed to McDonald's and bought some chips because I couldn't make it through emigration and security without eating SOMETHING. Once through all of that nonsense, I got Rickrolled by Melbourne Airport Duty Free, then went and ordered some proper food, which turned out to be a vegetarian pizza that tasted like bacon, something that really shouldn't be a thing...
Eventually, I was on the plane and ready for almost 24 hours trapped in a metal cylinder. WHEEEEEEEEEE. Luckily, Qantas apparently loves Marvel almost as much as I do, so I spent a decent chunk of the trip watching Marvel movies -
X-Men: Days of Future Past,
The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and
Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I also could have watched
Captain America: The First Avenger,
Iron Man 2, or
Iron Man 3. But I figured three Marvel movies in a 24 hour period was probably enough. (I did also watch non-Marvel stuff, but most of it wasn't worth mentioning. Except
Chef. That was great.)
The flight was...rather more exciting than anticipated. There was a 20-something girl sitting across the aisle from me who turned out to be insanely claustrophobic, so a couple of hours into the flight, she had a full blown panic attack and spent the next two hours of the flight lying on the floor by the bathrooms while her parents hovered awkwardly. Eventually, they decided to move her and her parents to a bulkhead row so that they had some more space, but because the flight was basically full, this meant having to move some people.
Said people were flying on staff tickets, one of the conditions of which is that you can be bumped at any time. But despite this, they threw a massive hissy fit and complained for like 20 minutes at the top of their lungs. At 3am while the entire plane was trying to sleep. Even after one of the staff had coldly explained to them the conditions of their tickets and informed them that everyone was trying to sleep, they still complained for another 10 minutes or so at the top of their lungs. So that was suuuuuuuuuuper fun. Still, I managed to get about five hours' sleep, which wasn't too bad, all things considered.
After approximately a hundred million years and a two hour layover in Dubai, we landed at Heathrow, where I promptly discovered that in the 27+ hours since I left home, my mascara had gone from freshly applied to this:
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| "Who the hell is Bucky?". Also, source. |
Luckily, I realised before I went through passport control or they may not have let me in the country... From there, I walked approximately a thousand kilometres to the Tube and made my way to my little brother, C's, office. I don't think the fancy pants receptionist downstairs was expecting someone in day-old clothes dragging a suitcase, because she looked a little perplexed before reluctantly giving me a visitor's badge. And then the receptionist at C's company had to try and get in touch with him by 14 different methods because he wasn't answering his phone. (It turned out he was shooting the breeze by the photocopier. Obviously...)
Eventually, we headed back to C's place and I was able to shower which was possibly the most exciting thing of ever. And then we headed out for a walk along the canal in the hopes that the last remaining sunlight of the day (after landing at 1.30, I didn't get to C's office until 4.00) would help my body clock to adjust. After nearly being run over by bikes for half an hour, we abandoned that plan in favour of food, and headed to a nearby pub for dinner.
Once there, I promptly decided to kickstart my holiday in fine form:
Which backfired once I realised that I'd just drunk most of a pint of cider without having eaten in about 8 hours, and I rapidly hit fight-the-urge-to-sleep-on-the-table territory... I rallied with the help of cheese fries and managed to stay awake long enough to get back to C's house and watch some TV before collapsing into bed at about 10.00.
And really, I think that's quite enough for one post! Next time, I brave the mean streets of London without a safety net.
K xx
