Yesterday everything went right, and for once I had a perfect British Airways stewardess. Not in the biblical sense though.
The day had begun in Glasgow in the middle of Monday night, and I ended up staying awake again for about 30 hours. In the air, at airports, and shopping for food in Tokyo.
I got into the usual delusions of invincibility, convinced that I would never need to sleep again. I had discovered a new spiritual secret, living outside the normal, beyond the understanding of blissheids flatheids and deifheids! How had I managed to escape the limitations of lesser mortals with their pathetic jet lag? Perhaps it was BA's five-course meals with free champers, wine and brandy, and I had hit on the precise combination dose of alcohol and tea. Or maybe it just comes from being one of Mannheim's Freischwebende. How fortunate to be above it all, to be in the middle class but not of it.
After gourmet dining in the hotel room - an exquisite 2 quid lunch box which I now wish I had photographed, none of your Glasgow stuffed rats - I fell asleep. And eventually awoke feeling as rough as guts.
Awake now in the middle of the night I have just cut my hair, and the adrenalin/stress of working with two mirrors seems to have got me going again. One false cut and I could have taken a lump out of hair or scalp to complement the big C chunk out of my neck - not the kind of balance I'm after.
I just loved being in Scotland again. The old friends, new friends and exes. The fluke weather. The familiar places, systems and accents. Simply feeling known, understood and sometimes appreciated. In NSC, there's only one person who does that - it must be a bit of a burden of responsibilty on her.
Tomorrow I'll lie around the hotel room all day. Maybe swim in the pool. Then the 10-hour overnight flight to NSC, this time in cattle class unless I score another free upgrade. On the way out, the check-in person had taken a shine to, or pity on, me. She upgraded me to business class. On a Japanese airline too! Amongst all that geisha grace, servility and efficiency, I almost hoped for a mid-air explosion so as to die in ecstasy.
As an added bonus, I wouldn't need to lie to the Piddledorf Pension Plan when putting in a claim for the business fare.
Albert? Congratulations on staying alive. I've never been in Japan. How come you've left Edinburgh when the Festival is just starting? That's daft! Hotboy
ReplyDeleteI say!
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful it must have been to go beyond the blissheids, flatheids and deifheids. Were you on the yellow and reds by any chance?
MM III
"Stewardess"?! I regret to inform you that this term assumed the same connotations as calling black people "coloured", female writers "authoresses" or "poetesses", female actors "actresses" and committee chairs "chairmen", all at approximately the same time.
ReplyDeleteSleep deprivation from shiftwork and jetlag is a fascinating altered state. One can be desperately tired and (with sufficient severity) objectively crazy- sometimes without a scrap of insight- and yet quite incapable of sleep.
We need to know more about the Japanese keyboards. Do the keys have kanji symbols?
Hotters - that's one of the nicest things you've ever said - conceding that being me qualifies as being alive.
ReplyDeleteMingers - just the blues and (separately) whites.
Ionics - re "stewardesses", you have to remember I come from NSC, which is attitudinally about 20 years behind the developed world. What do civilised people call them? Stewards? Hosts?
Indeed the Jap (I know, I know) keyboards are infuriatingly cluttered with Kanji stuff, and seem to jump in and out of Kanji mode without reason. i gave up trying to email folk, including yourself, from the free internet at Tokyo airport. Fortunate for you perhaps, since by that time the sleep debt was off the scale. As you say, it's an entertaining experience.
For you back-of-beyonders, the correct term currently is "flight attendant". Listen and learn.
ReplyDeleteGlad you made it home safe. I expect that after 18 airborne hours, the toilets were... mingin, even in business class. Do business-class passengers have bodily functions?
The best thing about sleep debt is that it's entirely reversible (with sleep), leaving one bemused by the pure believability of the temporary thought disorder.
Ion - only 18? If only! And the last nine were in sewage class. It's a long story.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed your accurate summary of the sleep debt consciousness, quite a trip in its own way and free of charge though perhaps not totally free of health risk?
I say!
ReplyDeleteDowngraded - how frightful.
MM III