The long flight home and the loss of four hours that I thought I had gained went on until just after 8am. I had hoped to sleep, but unfortunately Monarch Airline's policy is less about making their passengers as comfortable as possible and more about making as much money as possible.
So although dinner had been delayed by turbulence, they still insisted on making sure they'd done their paid for snack and drinks service to the cabin of very hungry people first.
I had paid for the headphones this time though they fell apart when I put them on as my head was too large to accommodate them), but something went wrong with the entertainment system (and it was hard not to worry that dirty air conditioner water was seeping its way into all the electrics of the plane) and by the time they'd rebooted it and I realised I'd have to watch an hour or so of sitcoms and cartoons before getting to the film, so decided to try and get three or four hours of sleep before landing. Which would have been fine, except just as I was drifting off at what would be about 4am UK time, the lights went on and the cabin staff came through noisily trying to sell duty free.
I'm not blaming the employees as I am sure they are made to do this, but surely the priority should be to allow people to do their best to sleep on a night flight, rather than trying to flog perfume and spirits. Duty free on the plane should be an extra for those people too stupid or lazy to do it at the airport, not a compulsory activity which requires everyone to be woken up. I wished as I was as capable of sleeping through stuff as the man who had been gently snoring to my immediate left. Even when he was woken up by the people next to him so they could get out to go to the bathroom, he was still snoring within seconds. Why couldn't I be him?
The salespeople, sorry cabin staff were back and forth up and down the aisle for a good hour or so, bumping into me every time they went by. So I pretty much accepted that I'd only be sleeping for 30 minutes tonight and played some computer games, eschewing the Richard Gere romance, which I am guessing from the opening ten minutes which I saw without sound, was also tinged with some kind of tragedy like a child getting cancer. Just a guess.
I was relieved when the plane landed - somehow it had held together through the turbulence - though I did mean to take its name as I suspect that one day it will be appearing in a big news story of some kind. Luckily today was not the day.
The moral of this sixteen hours of my life is that it might be worth choosing a different carrier than Monarch to get you to your holiday. The only king I felt like was a 'king tired idiot.
London was cold and everything outside of the terminal windows looked grey. Even though I had left there only a little over a fortnight ago, Shepherd's Bush seemed strange and alien. I dragged my suitcase from the tube station, fully expecting that I would want to fall straight into bed, but somehow I stayed awake all day, not going to bed til after midnight. Maybe I had stored up extra sleep in all those hours of deep Grenadian slumber. I caught up on some of the TV I'd Sky plussed and went to get some groceries from Westfield. Grenada seemed like a distant dream. Maybe I wasn't tired because I'd been asleep in Shepherd's Bush for two weeks and the whole thing had been imagined by my subconscious.
Actually that makes more sense. I couldn't have caught fish in my hand, or seen the stitching that holds the sea and the night sky together.
And yet there was sand in my shoes and in my suitcase.
Maybe it all really happened.
The waves continued to crash against the shore without me there to observe them, just as they will long after I am not around to observe anything.
And Grenada has nothing on Westfield does it?
