Annoyingly after the flight from Glasgow to Heathrow and then Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur. The flight from Kuala Lumpur didnÂ’t go directly to Melbourne, but instead stopped over in Sydney. Which meant at around 8pm local time Melbourne passed some way to the right of our plane. I was tempted to knock on the door of the cock pit and ask the pilot if he couldnÂ’t just drop us off as he was passing and all. But I think that might have been considered a hi-jack situation.
Despite the fact that the plane would arrive at Melbourne in about three hours time, to ask for it to go there a bit early would be a criminal offence.
So there was an unwelcome further stop in the widely perceived as, though actually not, capital of Australia before just one more flight on this 32 hour journey.
But by now it felt I had spent my entire adult life either on a plane or sitting in an airport. To actually arrive at my destination and be able to go to other places and meet other people was actually a bit frightening. I was like one of those lifers who gets so acclimatised to life in prison that they have to top themselves when they are finally released.
In my tiredness and confusion I managed to almost board the wrong flight to Melbourne, though unhelpfully the departure screens only listed on flight and so I had assumed that that must be mine. I had thought they had said to get back on at 10.30pm, but the screens had said 10.50pm and now realising my error I rushed from gate 55 to 51 fairly sure that I would have missed my plane.
But luckily they had waited for me, though it was slightly embarrassing having to walk back in to all the rows of people who had been intelligent enough to get on the right plane at the right time.
But the woman sitting next to me (the non-listening man had got off at Malaysia to advise people about engineering and then not listen to what they said back) who hadn’t said a word between Kuala Lumpur and Sydney told me that a few people had been confused and that as I was a comedian (I don’t know how she’d found out – maybe the flight attendants knew and had speculated that my late arrival was some kind of joke) I could keep them all entertained during the rest of the flight.
But she was joking herself, fortunately and we managed to have quite a long and interesting chat about the war. About half an hour in though, she decided to read her paper and the conversation ended and I realised that as she had been quite interesting, this time I must be the one who was boring and stupid and insane.
So I drank my complimentary champagne and speculated what my new life back on the ground would be like. I decided that although it would be hard to adjust back to those old days that I would give it a try.
