Getting there

This holiday has had a less than auspicious beginning.

Well, in fairness, the very, VERY beginning went entirely to plan. We aimed to leave the house early enough to fit in some duty free shopping prior to boarding, which we are usually obliged to rush through. In this we entirely succeeded. That is, we left the house more or less at the time we had aimed for.

Of course, the problems began as soon as we arrived at the airport. As our friendly taxi driver (himself planning a holiday before his newly married wife arrives in Australia so he can see the sights before having to settle down – what a romantic) drove off, we settled down to get our things together for check-in. One of Sim’s things was conspicuously missing. The odds of this being a big deal were slender. After all, as Kari has been known to put it, all you really need on a holiday is a passport and a credit card. Everything else you can fix up later. Obviously, this doesn’t apply if the thing you’re missing IS YOUR PASSPORT.

After a tense 9-minute phone call confirming that it hadn’t been left in the cab, Sim boldly jumped back into a taxi in the no-pick-up area and sped home. A further tense 15 minute wait ensued, before I received the phone call confirming that he had found it at home. For once, living under the flight path paid off: if we had settled improbably in the mortgage belt, it would have been a much longer round trip. On a side note, I did have plenty of time to wonder, during those 15 minutes, what would happen if Sim’s passport had disappeared. Would I just go off on a holiday by myself? Luckily for the happiness of our marriage, these questions didn’t, ultimately, need to be answered.

Turnaround in Singapore was scheduled to be a rapid one. Of course I chose to wear my sheepskin-lined boots on the flight, which was for the best in the FREEZING cabin, but was not the preferable choice when power walking through the massive terminal of a tropical city airport in what I do not consider to have been adequate air conditioning. It took about 20 minutes to get from one gate to the other, leaving no time before our boarding time to do anything as frivolous as look for a shower.

Weirdly, Singapore requires you to go through security screening in order to access the gate lounge, so once you get to the gate, you’re kind of committed to it. Which was unfortunate, since our plane, as it turned out, could not be boarded on time because “engineers” needed to “examine” it due to some “mechanical problems”. Considering we were looking down the barrel of a 13-hour flight across the airspace of, inter alia, Afghanistan, this did not inspire confidence. Of course, at this point, sleep-deprived, dehydrated and malodorous, death at the hands of hostile forces was frankly losing its shock value.

Eventually we boarded, taxied, took off, reached cruising altitude, descended, and landed at Heathrow. Hollow-eyed, we shuffled through the terminal and, after a downright uncivil welcome by the border staff, reached the foggy London air. It was at this point that I noticed that my reading glasses did not seem to have made it off the plane. Back we trekked to Departures, enduring another 15 minutes of somewhat less tense anticipation before being told they couldn’t be found. So that’s one less thing I have to remember to pack on our way home.

(By the way, if the spelling and grammar are not up to my usual standards, it’s because looking at the screen without glasses is starting to take its toll.)

We had booked an apartment in Soho for the first couple of nights here. Sim had contacted the owner a few days ago about arrangements for getting into the place on our arrival, but hadn’t got an email back. We gave him a call from the airport, but got his voicemail. Since we didn’t know whether he had checked it, we took a slow train from Heathrow and took our time getting to the apartment. At the pub next door, we tried calling again. Still voicemail. Sim made use of the free wifi to see whether he’d had an email. Nothing. Eventually we had a text back, to say that the guy was at the dentist but would meet us in an hour.

It was about lunch time, so we made our sandwiches across the road last as long as possible, then at the appointed time went and waited for him. And waited. I eventually got my book out. And waited some more. Long story short, someone’s phone was not functioning. At this point, it was approximately 36 hours since my last shower, 40 hours since I had had what I consider to be real sleep.

We did, ultimately, make it inside, and have now both showered. We’re pushing through the lethargy and are about to go for a walk down to the British Museum. Now let us never speak of getting to London again.