Debt of Honour
Jun. 6th, 2012 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyA headline today: Sofia Loren urged to stop 'monster of the sea'. That's a bit harsh, isn't it? She's an old lady. Get someone else to fight the sea monster, Italy!
I went to my meeting at the airport, testing my new travel kit. So that was exciting. I didn't take my laptop, thinking I'd hardly need internet access, but then I had an adventure on the way there and I didn't have any way of writing about it here, so didn't I feel foolish? And now it doesn't seem worth writing about at all. That won't stop me, though. I thought I'd save myself some travelling time, you see, by flying to Melbourne. Flying means driving an hour in the other direction to Portland and catching the plane there, but even counting that, it's quicker than taking the train.
Right, so, I booked my flight and organised my mother to drive me to Portland on Monday, so she could drop me off at the airport (check in three-thirty for a four o'clock flight), then meet her friend, Colleen, who lives in Portland, for afternoon tea. I woke Monday morning to weather most foul: gale-force winds and belting rain. I rang the airline and asked how the flight was looking. Answer: fine at this stage.
Given the weather was so bad, we left early, and made it to Portland by two-thirty, so we both went to Colleen's house. She had just put the kettle on when my phone rang. It was the airline. The weather was too bad, so the flight was now going to take off from Hamilton, and could I be at the airport in ten minutes? I said, 'I'm in Portland, I can't get to the Hamilton airport in ten minutes,' and the woman, clearly glad to be speaking to a stupid idiot rather than an angry one, said, no, she meant the Portland airport. They were going to bus us north to Hamilton. So I asked Colleen if we were within ten minutes of the airport, and her husband said, 'If we go RIGHT NOW!', picking up his coat as he said it.
So he and I and my mother got in the car and my mother put her foot down. Halfway there, we had to stop at a T-insection to give way to a car with an airline logo on it, so Colleen's husband said, 'Follow that car!' He was having fun. Anyway, we got there with minutes to spare and I checked in. Then the other three passengers and I got in the very same car we'd just followed to the airport, and the pilot drove us 90 minutes north to Hamilton airport, wearing his pilot's hat and jacket all the way.
There were three passengers waiting there, so all of us got on the little 14-seater plane. The pilot had to do his whole 'I am your captain, speaking from the flight deck' routine, which seems a little silly, given that it's such a small plane. He could have just turned around and spoken at normal volume. Anyway, then the co-pilot went along and collected our boarding passes (little laminated squares that they re-use each flight). He said to the man in seat one 1A, next to the main door, that in an emergency, 1A is the passenger in charge of opening the door under supervision from the flight crew, or, if they are incapacitated, by following the directions on this laminated sheet of A4. I thought, ha, I'm glad I'm not in 1A. Then the co-pilot came to me and said, oh, 4C, in the event of an emergency, you're in charge of the emergency exit. I looked, and my window did seem to be suspiciously door-shaped. So I also had to read a laminated sheet of directions, which were all about how heavy the door was. It's a probably a good thing that we weren't required to find out if I could open the door or not.
Even though the weather in Hamilton was no better than it was in Portland, we took off, and the flight was smooth. We were in cloud all the way, which is a bit weird. It felt like we weren't moving. I like to see the ground. The captain said again that he was speaking to us from the flight deck, which... we just saw you turn on the microphone, Captain, we know where you are. Anyway, from the flight deck, the captain told us that the flight should land on time at five-fifteen. After a while, I thought it must be near time, so I looked at my watch and it was spot on five-fifteen, and at that moment we were hit with horizontal rain. It was like having buckets of water thrown at us. We hit turbulence for the first time all flight. So we spent another thirty minutes in the air, in the dark and the rain and the wind. I don't normally get motion sickness, but I was starting to feel a little queasy, so I sat back and closed my eyes. After a while, my ears started popping, so I guessed we were descending and opened my eyes, and lo! the lights of Melbourne were before us. When we stopped, there was a fire engine, lights flashing, and four firemen watching us. That might have been a coincidence, though.
So I got to my hotel nearly an hour later than I planned, and I was cold and wet and feeling a bit sorry for myself, and the chilli and cheese scroll I'd brought with me for dinner didn't seem all that appealing. So for the first time in my life, I ordered room service, including a pot of tea for $5. Then, while I was waiting for my meal, I found the kettle and tea-bags hidden in the wardrobe. Hmph. So that was my adventure.
I came home by train as planned, and my mother picked me up from the station. She told me about her friend, Sheril, who has just got back from holidays, having had an even more exciting time than my flight. She and her husband stayed in a newly-opened B&B, which was a separate cottage next-door to where the owners lived. So there they were one night, fast asleep, when they were woken by blinding search lights and a voice on a loud speaker saying it was the police and they'd best come out. So they did. I mean, you would, wouldn't you? And the police were all, 'Which one of you made the call?', which puzzled Sheril and Bill. It turns out that the police had been contacted by Western Australian police, who had got a 000 (emergency) call from a mobile registered to the B&B address. By then the B&B owners had come out and said that they'd only recently purchased the place from people who had moved to Western Australia, so the police apologised and went away again. So that's a holiday memory to take away.
I went to my meeting at the airport, testing my new travel kit. So that was exciting. I didn't take my laptop, thinking I'd hardly need internet access, but then I had an adventure on the way there and I didn't have any way of writing about it here, so didn't I feel foolish? And now it doesn't seem worth writing about at all. That won't stop me, though. I thought I'd save myself some travelling time, you see, by flying to Melbourne. Flying means driving an hour in the other direction to Portland and catching the plane there, but even counting that, it's quicker than taking the train.
Right, so, I booked my flight and organised my mother to drive me to Portland on Monday, so she could drop me off at the airport (check in three-thirty for a four o'clock flight), then meet her friend, Colleen, who lives in Portland, for afternoon tea. I woke Monday morning to weather most foul: gale-force winds and belting rain. I rang the airline and asked how the flight was looking. Answer: fine at this stage.
Given the weather was so bad, we left early, and made it to Portland by two-thirty, so we both went to Colleen's house. She had just put the kettle on when my phone rang. It was the airline. The weather was too bad, so the flight was now going to take off from Hamilton, and could I be at the airport in ten minutes? I said, 'I'm in Portland, I can't get to the Hamilton airport in ten minutes,' and the woman, clearly glad to be speaking to a stupid idiot rather than an angry one, said, no, she meant the Portland airport. They were going to bus us north to Hamilton. So I asked Colleen if we were within ten minutes of the airport, and her husband said, 'If we go RIGHT NOW!', picking up his coat as he said it.
So he and I and my mother got in the car and my mother put her foot down. Halfway there, we had to stop at a T-insection to give way to a car with an airline logo on it, so Colleen's husband said, 'Follow that car!' He was having fun. Anyway, we got there with minutes to spare and I checked in. Then the other three passengers and I got in the very same car we'd just followed to the airport, and the pilot drove us 90 minutes north to Hamilton airport, wearing his pilot's hat and jacket all the way.
There were three passengers waiting there, so all of us got on the little 14-seater plane. The pilot had to do his whole 'I am your captain, speaking from the flight deck' routine, which seems a little silly, given that it's such a small plane. He could have just turned around and spoken at normal volume. Anyway, then the co-pilot went along and collected our boarding passes (little laminated squares that they re-use each flight). He said to the man in seat one 1A, next to the main door, that in an emergency, 1A is the passenger in charge of opening the door under supervision from the flight crew, or, if they are incapacitated, by following the directions on this laminated sheet of A4. I thought, ha, I'm glad I'm not in 1A. Then the co-pilot came to me and said, oh, 4C, in the event of an emergency, you're in charge of the emergency exit. I looked, and my window did seem to be suspiciously door-shaped. So I also had to read a laminated sheet of directions, which were all about how heavy the door was. It's a probably a good thing that we weren't required to find out if I could open the door or not.
Even though the weather in Hamilton was no better than it was in Portland, we took off, and the flight was smooth. We were in cloud all the way, which is a bit weird. It felt like we weren't moving. I like to see the ground. The captain said again that he was speaking to us from the flight deck, which... we just saw you turn on the microphone, Captain, we know where you are. Anyway, from the flight deck, the captain told us that the flight should land on time at five-fifteen. After a while, I thought it must be near time, so I looked at my watch and it was spot on five-fifteen, and at that moment we were hit with horizontal rain. It was like having buckets of water thrown at us. We hit turbulence for the first time all flight. So we spent another thirty minutes in the air, in the dark and the rain and the wind. I don't normally get motion sickness, but I was starting to feel a little queasy, so I sat back and closed my eyes. After a while, my ears started popping, so I guessed we were descending and opened my eyes, and lo! the lights of Melbourne were before us. When we stopped, there was a fire engine, lights flashing, and four firemen watching us. That might have been a coincidence, though.
So I got to my hotel nearly an hour later than I planned, and I was cold and wet and feeling a bit sorry for myself, and the chilli and cheese scroll I'd brought with me for dinner didn't seem all that appealing. So for the first time in my life, I ordered room service, including a pot of tea for $5. Then, while I was waiting for my meal, I found the kettle and tea-bags hidden in the wardrobe. Hmph. So that was my adventure.
I came home by train as planned, and my mother picked me up from the station. She told me about her friend, Sheril, who has just got back from holidays, having had an even more exciting time than my flight. She and her husband stayed in a newly-opened B&B, which was a separate cottage next-door to where the owners lived. So there they were one night, fast asleep, when they were woken by blinding search lights and a voice on a loud speaker saying it was the police and they'd best come out. So they did. I mean, you would, wouldn't you? And the police were all, 'Which one of you made the call?', which puzzled Sheril and Bill. It turns out that the police had been contacted by Western Australian police, who had got a 000 (emergency) call from a mobile registered to the B&B address. By then the B&B owners had come out and said that they'd only recently purchased the place from people who had moved to Western Australia, so the police apologised and went away again. So that's a holiday memory to take away.