Greetings fellow chuckle hounds. You will no doubt be screamingly keen to learn that I have returned safe and sound from the party capital of the world, Madrid, to rock the coolth of Canberra once more.
Well ‘sound’ is probably a bit of a stretch. Racing straight from the airport to BMA HQ, smelling of Satan's armpit and caked in enough travel grease to fry a mess hall's worth of eggs doesn’t really qualify as ‘sound’. But that's the insatiable Mother Deadline for you. She waits for no man.
It has been awhile since I have indulged in international air travel, but with a plane flight worthy of a fourth Lord of the Rings book, I am once again fondly reminded of the joys of travelling on a writer's budget.
Upon boarding, you first need to move past the superior classes airlines so cruelly dangle in front of you. You start wide-eyed in the effortless suave of Business Class, move grudgingly through the spacious splendour of First Class, past the fetid, claustrophobic rank of the charmingly titled Economy Class before finally reaching your ‘seats’ in the Super Budget Pen of Despair. After picking off the gum and shooing away one of the chickens that had escaped from its crate, you settle in and wait for an aperitif to kick off the gruelling journey ahead.
"Can I get you something sir?" offers an overweight tranny in an air hostess uniform, sporting a face like a crab's bus ticket and a smile lacking as much in conviction as it was in teeth.
"Yes, I'll have a flat white thanks."
A very short time later, my nose is ablaze with pain.
"There's your flat white," she says, having just rammed a plate into my face. It seems liquids aren’t covered in the cost of travel.
After spending 14 hours with the wife's elbow jammed into my eye and my knee rammed in the small of her back (generally looking like we'd gone horribly wrong attempting page 137 of the Karma Sutra) we touch down, so ending the first of five legs of the journey.
Aaaaaaah connecting flights, where you get to revel in the international shopping paradise and nationalistic nuance of each country’s airport. Or so I anticipated. Disembarking the plane (and reinserting my shoulder back into its socket), we're led down a dark alley to wait for our connecting flight. While the Others are led into the opulence of a room decked out like the Garden of Eden (or so I assume; the electrified perimeter kept us at bay, but I could hear the unmistakable clink of cocktail glasses and Middle Class Laughter on the other side that only such a setting could summon), we are led to the Peanut Lounge, a room so called not because of the blushing abundance of snacks to be consumed, but for the litany of empty shells scattered all over the ground.
The following Thursday, our connecting flight was ready to leave.
High-larity aside it wasn’t that bad, but it’s an undeniable slog that reminds you just how far away we are from the rest of the world and how lucky we are that, despite our penchant for Southern Cross tattoos and casual racism, the world’s great talent decides to visit us. And you need to experience a bit of pain to make it all worth while. “It’s not the destination but the journey” some smug self-satisfied spiritual git once said. With international air travel, it’s the slog of the journey that makes the destination worthwhile.
But next time I’m travelling in Business Class; I just need to sell that damn novel (if any of you know a publisher who’d be keen to look at my novel Insert Witty Title Here, let me know at frankandbeans_69@hotmale.com)
ALLAN SKO
