The hellish trip home
Isn’t it wonderful to wake up with a hell of a headcold knowing that the next 36 hours are going to be spent in planes and airport waiting lounges? No. No it is not.
And thus my journey begins its end.
I greet the useless hotel desk guy at 6 in the morning to check out. I want a detailed list of phone calls I’ve made for the good of my insurance claim to come, but it’s beyond him. Damn these public holiday staff. My airport transfer arrives and not only does he not have credit card facilities as promised by the ad, but he also doesn’t have any change! He promises to square up the bill next time I’m in Paris. Grrr.
And then I go about standing in the change-your-ticket queue at the BA desk for half an hour. What a joy that is when there’s a 25kg bag dependent on you. Anyway, I somehow end up on the plane without any further dramas and I even managed to only be as sick as the number of tissues I had.
Not too much later I touch down in Heathrow and right after finding Justine I head to Boots to stock up on cold and flu tablets. The guy warns me that the night time ones are very strong and not to take them during the day. I agree, chuckle to myself and then get one into me as soon as I’ve left the shop. I had some time to kill and so bought a phonecard to call Peter. For once the phonecard doesn’t expire in 27 seconds so I decide to give my parents a call. It didn’t work and it wasn’t til later that I realised it was because I was doing something stupid like leaving out the area code. And this was only the beginning of the torturous journey!
By the time Justine and I are on the next plane I realise that I can’t hear much out of one ear at all. Nevermind, I say to myself, it’ll fix itself up when I land. I can hardly stomach the airline food so I happily zonk out for most of it. Then it was time for landing. Boy could I feel it. Can I advise you to never, ever, ever get on a plane with an ear you can’t hear from? Ouch.
Did I mention we were headed for Toyko? At first I was excited by this proposition because we had 12 hours to kill there, but we landed and worked out that it would take most of that time to get from the airport to the city and back. I felt like I was in another universe. My ear made me feel like I was underwater and I was finding it really difficult to hear any of those little softly spoken Japenese women. We couldn’t even work out how to get out of the airport!
But we did….