brissiemaz

7.There’s nowhere to pull over…..ever!

Posted on June 19, 2012 by brissiemaz

Now, as I said, my first BIG mistake was to assume there’d be somewhere to pull over and consult the road map.

THERE IS NOWHERE TO PULL OVER ……………EVER!!!!!!!!!!!

– and it was a mistake that I would go on repeating most of the time I was in the UK. (Who says I’m stupid?)

Heading for London from Heathrow, once I was in the line of traffic that pressed ever forward in a claustrophobic fashion on the A4 I was there for life – or so it seemed.

EVERYONE ELSE knew when the right-turn lanes were coming up a mile ahead but I was often left stranded behind a million cars that wanted to turn right. No-one was going to let me into the left hand lane to get past them.

Mind you, the fact that time and time again when I wanted to move into the left lane I flicked on the windscreen wipers rather than the left indicator might have contributed somewhat to the problem. These controls are round the other way on my car back home and I felt like a right idiot as I began my brave push into the left lane while simultaneously starting the windscreen wipers. To make matters worse I had no idea how to turn the damn things off.! My glasses were in my bag somewhere and I didn’t improve the situation as my blind frantic fiddling with the control on the other side of the steering column caused the wipers to scrape violently at great speed across the windscreen. Then, for good measure, I added a burst of water that was smeared across in a thin film in front of me.

Couldn’t see a thing!

My stress levels were not helped by the fact that I was driving a manual car for the first time in years.

I hoped that the hire firm didn’t have hidden cameras fitted as I heard myself calling the locals some very rude names and realised I was actually turning red in the face! Oh, the frustration of it all.

Finally I’d had enough and decided I needed to get off the main road, find a nice, quiet back road and pull over and wait for the traffic madness to subside.

This was my second BIG mistake.

THERE IS NOWHERE TO PULL OVER……….EVER!!!!!!!!!

Admittedly it’s the same mistake I’d made earlier but the consequences were more far-reaching this time. I found myself in a labyrinth of lanes and roundabouts where the traffic was either moving at a snail’s pace or stationary.

WHY!!!

WHY did I leave the main road???

Now I was in a bigger pickle than before and – what was worse – because it was an overcast day I got to a point where I didn’t know if I was heading North, South, East or West. Something had happened to my sense of direction in the northern hemisphere. At least when I wasn’t moving on the A4 I knew the car was pointed in the right direction!

Sh*t!

I simply had to keep driving – I knew not where – till I saw a sign for London and the A4. Not as easy as you might think but at last I found myself actually welcoming the sight of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the A4. Thank God I’m on a road that I know for sure is heading where I want to go.

I learned another lesson that morning – tailgating is mandatory on English roads. If I so much as THOUGHT that I might leave a civilized gap between my car and the one in front of me another small silver/grey car would pass me and push its nose in in front of me and force me to let it into the line of traffic. I don’t mind letting other drivers in occasionally but this was ridiculous! It seemed to be taken as some sign of weakness or timidity on my part. You must be no more than a hair’s breadth behind the car in front or you’ve had it.

What’s more amazing is that the age, sex, race or creed of the other driver makes no difference. It’s not just the young testosterone-charged males – oh no! – it’s the grannies as well. It added up to quite a different England from the one I left 21 years ago. The consideration for others has declined dramatically. It seems to be more of a dog-eat-dog environment these days – although my trips outside of London reassured me that the old civility still exists away from the big city – EXCEPT……. on the roads.

So I made the most of having the car pointing in the right direction and let the flow carry me towards London. At some point nearer the city, exactly where remains a blur to this day, I joined the M4 so that I could make use of the directions I’d memorised at home and, although it took a while, I was quite relaxed now as I knew for sure where I was and where I was headed. I reached the place I was renting about 10am .

Good old London had plenty more in store for me.

Will keep you informed!

Posted in England, Heathrow, Travel | Tagged humor, humour, M4 | Leave a comment

5.Getting to the car hire place

Posted on June 15, 2012 by brissiemaz

The Pakistani chap and I chatted amicably as he drove the bus of which I was the sole occupant to the pickup point for my hire car. ( I’m a bit backward in the modern terminology department. The driver was not happy when I made reference to the ‘van’ we were in – ‘bus’ he corrected me. Once upon a time a bus was a big long vehicle capable of carrying upwards of 30 passengers. Nowadays it seems that anything that carries more than 8 or 9 is called a bus.)

I had booked the car online at 2 o’clock one morning a few weeks earlier in Brisbane, almost nodding off in front of my laptop while occasionally cursing loudly about the fact that I hadn’t upgraded to a speedier plan to connect to the internet. To make things easier for myself when I arrived in the UK I had decided to pick the car up at Heathrow Airport and take the M4 Motorway into London, followed by a few minutes drive on the North Circular ring road and I’d be ‘home’.

On the contract for the car the designated pickup point was ‘Heathrow Airport’ so I fondly imagined that I’d pick up the car reasonably close to where I exited the terminal.

Not so.

In my 21-year absence Heathrow Airport and its associated bits and pieces have become a rather large town, sprawling in an untidy fashion over vast tracts of countryside.

As a result, it’s a 15 minute drive in the van from Terminal 4 to the car pick-up point and I begin to think that the friendly Pakistani man is a lunatic who likes to keep driving round in circles rather than take us to our destination. It will take me a week or two to become accustomed to England’s roundabouts again.

Eventually I am deposited on the forecourt of one of the big hotels that flank the airport and, as it’s about 8am, the area is awash with men of various ages in dark suits trying to look as though the sky might fall in if they don’t make it to that important meeting NOW. Laptops and mobile phones to the fore they mill about on the pavement, glancing hurriedly at watches, appearing to tear strips off the hapless souls at the other ends of the numerous phones.

The van driver has kindly chucked my luggage in the general direction of the footpath and I hurriedly try to stack it tidily where it won’t be run over by the hundreds of taxis that are coming and going in a steady stream. I don’t want to block the pedestrian access either but as soon as I get everything neatly piled high and turn to go inside to find a trolley there’s an avalanche of bags onto the pavement. After fruitlessly attempting to remedy the situation a number of times I offer an apology to all and sundry then run inside in the hope of getting some help.

I’m in luck and whisk a trolley outside just in time to witness an unfortunate be-suited chap tripping on the edge of my luggage heap and landing on all fours on my port. I race over to offer assistance only to cop an earful about how only an idiot would leave their belongings in such a place. Although I’m too tired to care much I make conciliatory burblings and apologize as I dust off his briefcase which, I note, is feather light compared to anything I’ve been carrying. No laptop there then, I think to myself in a strangely smug way. (What’s THAT about??)

After he storms off, cursing in an accent I can’t identify, I try to find a combination of pieces of luggage that will stay put, untethered, piled high on the trolley.

Muttering to myself and occasionally retrieving a straying piece of luggage I manage to weave my way inside and am relieved to find that I have left the hustle and bustle behind me. It’s serenely quiet and civilised on this side of the glass doors.

More later….

Posted in airport, Heathrow, Travel | Tagged humor, humour, laptop | Leave a comment

6.Hiring the car

Posted on June 15, 2012 by brissiemaz

I further find that there is no queue at the counter – I am attended to by a very courteous man of Italian origin and in no time at all I’m handing over vast sums of money for the car rental.

As I write this I am becoming aware of my obsession with a person’s ethnic background. While most of the people I write about here are English I notice that I refer to them as ‘of Italian origin’, ‘of West-Indian origin’, ‘of Pakastani origin’. In most cases these descriptions are accurate as I often ask people about their background and I tell them about mine. These folk may well be British – far more British than I am – as a lot of them were born there. I don’t mean to question this; I simply find it fascinating to observe how someone looks, how they speak, how they move…. and my comments are meant to reflect just that.

If someone (rather unkindly) referred to me as an old, fat Caucasian woman I wouldn’t take that as a racial slur. It’s just a statement of fact. I remember recently at home in Australia I exchanged a few words with a couple who spoke with an unmistakable Yorkshire accent and after a few sentences I couldn’t help enquiring about where they were from. ‘York’ they said beaming broadly at me ‘but we’ve lived in Brisbane for the past 40 years’. I commented on how they’d not lost their wonderful accents and this led to a delightful discussion about our backgrounds, travels and the UK.

Now I’d have missed out on all that if I’d simply kept quiet about noticing their accent. I believe that mentioning it is a celebration of the fact that we’re all different rather than being a negative comment. I have exceptional hearing and can detect an accent at a hundred paces – long may it be so.

But…I’m wandering…back to paying for the hire car.

It really is less painful spending money using a credit card – and so much more convenient. I even took the maximum car insurance in spite of a slightly uncomfortable feeling that maybe I was being too careful and ‘old’ – but a few days of driving on English roads made me realise I had been very wise indeed.

While dealing with the chap at the hire counter I find it hard to overcome the feeling that I’m being duped (old family influences die hard) because

I can’t remember the exchange rate,
I’m very, very tired, and
the chap behind the counter is a fast talker.

He’s also aware that

I probably don’t know the exchange rate
I’m very, very tired, and
he’s a fast talker

I’m sure if he’d asked me for 3 times what I was due to pay I would have given my signature with only the vaguest worry somewhere in the back of my mind that perhaps all wasn’t well. It would then have taken a few days of mulling over the events plus huge amounts of sleep before I realised what had happened and rung the hire mob to give them a razzing and demand my money back.

Fortunately nothing untoward has occurred and soon all my luggage is stowed and I’m settled into my almost new small silver/grey car. Don’t ask me what sort of car because, to me, a car is something with 4 wheels that transports me from place to place while keeping me warm and dry. To that end my only stipulation was that it had air-con…..well, and a roof, obviously. I hired the cheapest car with air-con that I could find.

On request I had been given an A to Z road guide for London – similar to our Refidex or UBD in Australia – and had been advised that I should forget about my original idea of using the M4 to reach London as at this time of day the morning peak-hour traffic on the motorway would be almost at a standstill. I was directed instead on to the A4 to London (‘A’ roads are a category below the motorways) which followed a similar route. Now before I left Australia I had carefully noted my M4/ North Circular trip to Ealing Common on my laptop but I had no idea of how changing to the A4 would affect things.

No probs, I thought to myself – as I get closer to town I’ll pull over and use the A to Z to get my bearings.

This was my first BIG mistake.

THERE IS NOWHERE TO PULL OVER ……………EVER!!!!!!!!!!!

As I type this the frustration comes surging back. I think I need a cuppa now!

Posted in accents, car hire, motorway | Tagged A4, humor, humour, M4, roundabout | 4 Comments

#*&#

Posted on June 10, 2012 by brissiemaz

Having trouble sorting out pages and posts and blogs and websites and images that won’t upload.

My only consolation is that things MUST get better. Still haven’t sorted out links to Twitter and Facebook!

Pray for me.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

4. Now for the people-processing!

Posted on June 7, 2012 by brissiemaz

Then begins the never-ending trudge to the immigration area – and very long it is too. I vaguely remember willing myself to keep going – it can’t be much further, surely – my memory of this bit is very hazy, but I do remember being astonished to find that there was no queue when I reached the immigration desk.

In the old days of the seventies the queues were a mile long. Maybe that’s an advantage of the early arrival.

I’ll store that bit of info away for next time.

I only hope I can find the file containing this valuable bit of info next time I decide to visit the UK. Age is very unkind.

The immigration officer is wearing a turban and a wonderfully bright smile considering the time of day. In no time at all he checks my details and welcomes me to England as he waves me through.

So – straight through immigration and off to the baggage collection area – but it’s worth all the trudging when I see trolleys !! and stagger towards one and plonk my stuff on it.

As I’m struggling to remove the backpack I look up to see my port coming round on the baggage carousel. It might be worth noting here that where I come from we always used the word ‘port’ rather than ‘suitcase’. I feel pretentious when I say suitcase so ‘port’ it is. For those who don’t know, it comes from portmanteau – an obviously French word meaning bag for carrying clothing.

So… in disbelief I’m watching my port come round and worry that it might be a long time before I see it again so I MUST fetch it NOW. The hordes will arrive any minute……surely.

Where is everybody? I’ve just fought my way off a plane with 300 passengers and I can only see 7 of them and there are 4 ports on the carousel, one of which is mine. I guess the tiredness was involved but I was momentarily stunned to think that I was a hair’s breadth from being in London at one of the busiest airports in the world and I could only see 7 people – where were they all?

I’d imagined a great shoving match at the baggage collection, much fighting for trolleys and luggage – but – 7 people and 4 ports. Where was everybody? After asking myself this question 84 times I managed to pull myself together and, with the backpack half-on and half-off I stumbled over to the carousel, literally fell over on to my port, scrambled up and skull-dragged it onto the floor.

Still, where is everybody?

OH, SHUT-UP MARY AND GET MOVING!!

Ok, Ok. Got all my luggage on the trolley. At last I breathe a sigh of relief. My arms are becoming a little shorter as they start to ease back into their sockets.

But further torment is in store – it’s time for Customs – dreaded Customs. I’ve always had a fear of the Customs lanes and the people who staff them.

It’s the same if I’m pulled over by the police in Australia for a random breath test, or RBT, for example. Now, a very relevant piece of information I should give you here is that I don’t drink alcohol so here’s an interesting fact.

If, when I’m asked ‘Have you consumed any alcohol in the past 4 hours, Madam?’, the police went by the look of guilt on my face then I’d be thrown in jail forthwith.

Fortunately they decide to go by the readout on the thingy I’ve just breathed into which assures them I’ve not had a drink all year.

But why can’t I show THAT on my face. Why can’t I look at the nice policeman with a look that says ‘Good evening officer, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve not drunk any alcohol at all this week’ rather than with one that says ‘O God you’ve caught me at it again’.

In spite of the fact that I don’t make a habit of trying to pull a swiftie on the customs department I always feel like an arch criminal as I walk down whichever lane I’ve chosen.

This time in the Nothing to Declare lane at Heathrow is no exception and I walk through what appears to be a preliminary area before coming to the business end where I will have to stand and be counted and tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.

I am nonchalantly looking about to see who is going to accost me and accuse me of having marijuana or worse secreted about my person. Schapelle Corby’s story is uppermost in my mind at this point!

I don’t see a single living soul. Not one.

It must be around the corner I think to myself – trust officialdom to prolong the agony.

And before I know it I’m around the corner and face to face with cheery folk holding up signs with ‘Smith’ and ‘Patel’ and ‘Neil’ on them –and of course the coffee shop.

I prop, frozen with fear, momentarily confused. What have I done??!! The hair stands up on the back of my neck as I realize – I’ve missed customs altogether! They’ll think I’m a crook!

As I stand rooted to the spot, berating myself for my stupidity, I wait for the yelling to start and for cries of ‘Stop that woman with the long arms!’ to ring out – and I pray they won’t use guns.

After all it’s a long time since I’ve been in the UK and if the shows on telly are anything to go by it’s quite possible that these days the security people might shoot first and ask questions later.

Through a fog of tiredness and fear I notice that the cheery folk holding up signs are smiling at me; people with pink faces as though they’ve not long come inside from the cold…… Mums and Dads, kids, all looking happy and carefree, waiting for a loved one.

Slowly it dawns on me that the empty room I just went through must have been the ‘Nothing to Declare’ section – all done with cameras perhaps? Or mirrors? Or else everyone was asleep. Seems a bit casual to me but who am I to argue?

No one is chasing me and shouting out for me to be arrested.

Nobody wants to search me or my luggage.

I’m home free! I’m here at last in wonderful England – a place I loved when I lived here for 13 years in the 70’s and 80’s – a place I feared I’d never get to see again – a place that brings me to tears when I see it back home on Top Gear, The Vicar of Dibley, AbFab, Only Fools and Horses, Time Team, The Bill to name a few.

And a place where I have a number of much-loved friends whom I’ve come to visit after an astonishingly long absence of 21 years – a place I love dearly.

I take a moment to gather my thoughts and take a few deep breaths – it’s not as though there’s anyone I’m holding up.

WHERE ARE THEY ALL – those people on the plane? What’s happened to them? It’s as though the earth has swallowed them up. One minute I’m being jostled and tripped up by 300 passengers getting off the plane; next minute – nobody.

WHERE ARE THEY?

I never did see another person come out at the same time as I did. Maybe I was just lucky.

As I wheeled my trolley out into that cold English morning – having donned my heavy warm coat – I marvelled at the fact that 20 minutes after the plane stopped on the runway I was out on the street at Heathrow. I had allowed an hour and a half for all of this palaver so my bus to the car hire firm would not be here till after 7am.

I know what I’ll do.

I’ll check out which is my bus stop and go back to the coffee shop and have a piping hot cappuccino and a yummy toasted sandwich.

If only!

******

Posted in baggage collection, Heathrow, RBT, Travel | Tagged arrival, breath test, busiest airports in the world, humor, humour, Nothing to Declare | 6 Comments

3. Feeding Time on the Plane

Posted on June 5, 2012 by brissiemaz

I relish the arrival of the food trolley as the struggling to open various packets and the trying to guess what on earth is on the plate in front of you helps to pass the time on an otherwise gruelling trip.

No matter how bad something tastes I always make sure I drink every drop and eat every morsel put in front of me. Then there’s the packets to read and napkins to fold into funny shapes – anything to help me forget where I am.

There is one item on the menu however that I will NEVER EVER touch – even though I could while away a good ten minutes each time it’s served. It’s one of my pet hates. The so-called ‘orange juice’.

It should be labelled with a far more appropriate title, namely, ‘yellow acid’. There may be a shortage of takers if it is properly named (unless, with yellow acid, I’ve inadvertently tapped into something psychedelic from the ‘60’s and 70’s. Dream on, baby!)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Let’s be honest here.

Who can say – and again I stress honestly say– that the taste of freshly squeezed juice of the fruit we call an orange bears any resemblance to the yellow acid drink served on aeroplanes – or in cafes and restaurants for that matter.

No one can. Not with any honesty. Not if they have ever actually tasted freshly squeezed orange juice.

I think the stuff they serve should be called something else – ‘adulterated orange juice’ comes to mind as does ‘2-year-old, twice boiled, reconstituted orange juice’. That way an establishment that actually serves the real thing, namely fresh orange juice, has the right to advertise it as such.

Currently, the 2-year-old mankey stuff can be referred to as fresh orange juice if they’ve not long added the water to the concentrate.

Are we all mad?

Why do we let them get away with it?

How’s this for a suggestion?

Item on Menu: Actual product being served:

Fresh orange juice Fresh orange juice

Old orange juice Anything not freshly squeezed

What could be simpler? No need for complicated truth-revealing titles that take up too much menu space.

They’ll try to duck it, no doubt, by using just ‘orange juice’ but I’m all for making the use of ‘fresh’ or ‘old’ mandatory. I’m not suggesting that the cabin crew should be frantically squeezing oranges mid-flight. It ‘s just a matter of getting in bottles of proper orange juice – they have quite a reasonable shelf life. The yellow acid lasts almost a lifetime because it doesn’t contain much worth consuming.

Let’s get one thing clear. In spite of all my banging on about it I do realise that some people actually ENJOY drinking yellow acid and drink it every day for brekkie and that’s fine. I can’t and don’t object to the actual existence of yellow acid but I do object to its masquerading as fresh orange juice. It is NOT fresh – it is the exact opposite of fresh.

* * *

Gosh – off on a tangent again. Where was I? Oh yes….eating and drinking on the plane.

There is a major drawback to all this eating and drinking, of course, and that is the fact that what goes in has to come out……

However much I may abhor the idea and delay the moment, there comes a time when I must face the fact that I need to visit the loo.

As I approach the loo I become a little tetchy with the 3 or 4 people who appear to be aimlessly lounging about near the Exit signs – I guess it’s one of the few places where there’s enough room to stretch your legs , I think to myself – but it’s a bit thoughtless to block the way to the loos like that……..

Then the blood drains from my face as I realise it’s actually a queue for the loo! Dear God! It’s torture enough having to pay a visit without having to stand beside, smile at and possibly even make small talk with people in the queue all the while pretending that bowel movements are not on the agenda.

Nobody mentions the fact that a short time hence we’ll be serially inhabiting the same 4 cubic feet and voiding our bowels but what I hate the most is the idea of having to use the same door handle, water tap etc as someone who for all I know isn’t fussy about washing their hands. Aaarrgh!

And why do some people leave such a mess – how hard can it be to dispose of tissues and paper hand towels in the bin – instead of leaving them near the basin or on the floor where they soak up vast quantities of who-knows-what to be trodden on later by some poor unsuspecting soul such as me!

Saints preserve us! What fun!

The very thought of it makes my blood run cold. I’ll have to start carrying rubber gloves on flights soon – although that may give rise to a certain amount of conjecture I suppose.

Having recovered from the loo torture I surprised myself this trip and did manage to watch a couple of movies for the first time. I was glad of the mind-numbing nature of the activity. I quite enjoyed the one about the Frost-Nixon interviews and was grateful for the distraction, the effect of which was exaggerated by desperately trying to focus on that tiny screen and hear what was being said. All very engaging to say the least.

But wait! What’s that the captain is saying?

Heathrow is in sight? Really?

Hallelujah brother!

So I manage to raise a smile as I stagger past the flight attendant because I’m about to be released from the prison that is the long-distance flight from Brisbane.

* * * *

Must away now and build a cage of chicken wire to keep the #@#* possums off my veggie garden.

Bye for now

Posted in England, inflight service, Travel | Tagged humor, humour, loo, orange juice | Leave a comment

2. Who says flying is fun?

Posted on June 4, 2012 by brissiemaz

We had landed at Heathrow at 5.40am and had been through the usual scrum that is the getting of luggage from overhead lockers and people pushing and shoving in the hope of getting off the plane 2 milliseconds faster than his or her neighbour – after waiting an eternity of course for the more well-heeled to get off first.

Mind you if they are prepared to pay something like $6000 more than I am for a seat on the plane then no doubt they deserve their comfy beds and being able to get off before the poor people in the economy section.

I was glad of the delay as it gave me time to get a decent blood flow restarted in my legs and to don my backpack.

Now you need to know a thing or two about my backpack.

Firstly it was heavy enough to break the back of a pack mule what with my many books and the ‘God have I made a big mistake bringing this? ‘ Mac laptop which by itself would make a good doorstop. Secondly, it is tricky getting it onto my back.

Usually I have to jump up quickly when the seatbelt sign goes out and grab the backpack – well ….there I go again……making things up. Because ‘grab the backpack’ is not an accurate description of what I do.

I have little short legs so I have to stand on tippy-toe, grunt and groan and haul on the straps of the bag till a kind gentleman nearby offers to help, then I stand by to catch it when the smiling gentleman drops it ……as he has been totally unprepared for the weight of it as it tumbles out of the locker.

I’ve learned from experience that unsuspecting passengers are not happy when a 2-ton backpack lands on their heads.

Having caught the thing I then need a fair bit of spare room to swing it up and back and get my arms through the shoulder straps. If I leave this manoeuvre till everyone else is standing up I literally can’t get the damn thing high enough to get it on.

Then there’s the video camera in its case.

‘Gosh’ murmurs the kind gentleman ‘are you sure you’ll be able to carry all that?’ then his jaw drops as the heavy coat and plastic bag full of ‘bits and pieces’ I’ve also brought with me fall down on my head. ‘Dear me, you are loaded down aren’t you?’

Having arranged all this about my person I catch my breath before adding the final piece of my cabin luggage – my handbag. This is enormous and stuffed with toiletries, cameras (yes – plural), any duty-free items I may have purchased and of course my money and travel documents.

I have a lot of these documents with me on this trip as I have spent many days and nights trawling through various websites doing my ‘homework’ for the trip. As a result I hired a car and rented 2 houses (the houses not to be used simultaneously, you understand) for my 6-week stay in London and Poole.

These bookings seem to have produced enough paper to have caused the felling of a significant number of trees – maybe a small forest even – but I try not to think of that side of things as I say a quick prayer that they won’t want to search my luggage.

Not that I’m carrying any contraband (whatever that means these days) but just the thought of having to go through all this lot in front of a total stranger leaves me feeling weak at the knees – or maybe it’s just the thought of my handbag taking its toll.

Anyway, as well as all the afore-mentioned stuff (see!) I also have within easy reach any document they might ask me for – so my handbag weighs a ton.

I leave it til the last possible moment to pick up this final item as my back is already beginning to ache and I don’t want to look as though my arms are being pulled out of their sockets as I force a smile and say goodbye to the stewardess and nod ‘Yes’ when she asks if I enjoyed the trip.

It’s all lies anyway.

The only reason I can dredge up a smile is that the god-awful trip is finally over. There’s no way to actually ENJOY a flight that’s taken 26 hours – what with the seats crammed together in all directions and the fact that your bottom first goes numb then starts to ache with all the sitting on it.

Unfortunately, getting up to stretch your legs and get blood back into your nether regions is a hazardous exercise as the flight attendants are endlessly pushing their cumbersome carts up and down the aisles serving plastic food on plastic utensils with plastic cutlery which bends into funny shapes when you try to use it.

You can find yourself stranded, unable to get back to your seat, until half the people on the plane have been fed.

It must be said that I do look forward to having a lot of fun with the many cellophane and foil packets containing food in many shapes and sizes.

Opening them, apart from annoying everyone with the crinkley-crunkley noises which distract them from their TV screens as they can’t resist seeing if you were served a tastier treat than they were, invariably causes these wonderful packets to strew their contents far and wide when they finally succumb to brute force.

Hours later I am still finding bits of peanut or crisp in the folds of my clothing – it certainly helps to pass the time. I feel a connection with the great apes as I hear my quiet, contented burbling while ‘grooming’ myself and nibbling on tasty morsels retrieved from about my person in the gloomy half-light that passes for night-time on a long-haul flight.

More about food later but – I must go to bed. Too old to be up this late!

Bye for now

Posted in baggage collection, England, Travel | Tagged booking online, carry-on luggage, humor, humour | Leave a comment

1.England! At last!

Posted on June 3, 2012 by brissiemaz

England! At last!

I arrived in England on a grey, brisk (they called it) morning in May.

‘Brisk’ in the UK, of course, really means ‘freezing cold’ for a Queenslander and it was still 6am when I emerged from terminal 4 at Heathrow Airport. There was a force 9 gale roaring through the undercover area where the hapless traveller is made to stand shivering while waiting for an afore-promised bus to arrive. (I know, I know. Well you’ve used the word afore-mentioned haven’t you? Well then – extrapolate. I do all the time.)

After walking miles (well it seemed like miles when loaded to the gunnels[1]with luggage) to try to establish that my bus would arrive at bus stop 26, and knowing I had an hour to wait, I dragged my weary self and ridiculously large amount of luggage back inside the terminal and back to the coffee shop. With great relief I plonked the lot of it in a big pile next to a table near the counter.

[1] ‘Gunnels’ is a modern spelling of ‘gunwales’ which refers to the top edge of the side of a boat. Hence ‘loaded to the gunnels’ means loaded to capacity. ‘Gunnels ‘ indicates how ‘gunwales’ is pronounced.

Even I was savvy enough to know what happens to unguarded luggage at an ‘overseas’ airport so I ensured that I could keep an eye on it while waiting to be served. I’d been warned before leaving Oz not to leave any belongings unattended once I was abroad, especially anywhere as far afield as England. Not that there was much evidence as yet that the country in which I found myself was, in fact, England.

Things have changed a lot since I was last in the UK 21 years ago and it has become much more multi-cultural… or is it simply that people from ‘foreign’ backgrounds are now allowed to work in ordinary jobs? Take the man at the immigration desk for instance. In the old days we used to be met by a stiff-upper-lip type looking down his nose at us…..at the colonial hicks he was forced to let into the country – no doubt against his better judgement.

So I was pleasantly surprised to be handing over my passport to a be-turbanned dark-skinned chap for his stamp of approval. Quite a change and – more remarkably – he spoke English without any hint of another accent. It gave me quite a jolt to realize that he was far more British than I was even though I was an Aussie!

Yes, I know. It does sound like a very old-fashioned outlook….but what can I say….I’m old. BUT I am trying to update my thinking…..honestly……. I am.

Now, at the coffee shop, I was confronted by three women behind the counter jabbering away in some European tongue. When I asked for a decaf coffee I received a rather cold, blank stare of disbelief – or was it incomprehension? I decided it was probably a bit of both after I heard the reply of the stern looking girl behind the counter. Then it was my turn to give HER a blank stare back – I hadn’t understood a single word she’d said in her thick accent.

She turned from me with disdain and carried on an animated discussion in her native tongue with a couple of colleagues…. maybe making fun of my peculiar accent! Not much chance of being understood then, I thought with a sinking feeling – none of them had been in the country very long by the sound of it.

I glanced from one to the other while pathetically mewing about what I wanted, hoping that one of them would take pity on me and make some effort to understand what I was saying. Eventually I had to settle for the type of coffee they obviously forced everyone to buy because it was the only one they could pronounce half -properly.

As for a discussion about a freshly toasted sandwich?

I gave up on that one very early in the piece and pointed dejectedly at a stale old muffin that looked as tired as I did.

Mind you, I felt that I, at least, had a very good excuse for looking so tired. The 26-hour flight from Australia during which I’d had little sleep had left me feeling too tired to care – too tired to put up much of a fight. Looking on the bright side I HAD managed to get the word ‘cappuccino’ across – after all it was a coffee shop – and I soon found myself forcing down a few dried out muffin crumbs and washing them down with some watery brown sludge with a smidgen of froth on top.

Now, I can put up with a lot, you know, but the only reason I drink coffee is to savour the froth and the yummy chocolate sprinkly stuff on the top of a cappuccino. I don’t drink any other sort of coffee – I can’t cope.

A full strength coffee would keep me awake for a fortnight and I don’t even like the taste of the stuff. Just the merest hint of coffee aroma and a big dollop of firm yet moist milk froth plus sprinkle is all I ask. I am fortunate insofar as in Australia we do make a good coffee. Even as a non-connoisseur of coffee it was quite evident to me that the English and some of their continental employees are hopeless at it.

I can imagine a training session for the, er…..wait-persons??…. wait-people?? No, wait, I’ve got it. Wait-staff.

“Okay then darlin’. ‘ave you got some of the brown stuff in the cup? Right then. ‘eat up some milk and chuck it in on top. Don’t muck about doin’ that frothin’ sh*t – time is money ‘ere, right? None of ‘em won’t know the difference anyway.” (Well he’s got that bit right, little does he know!)

Let’s just say I was less than impressed by my first taste of English coffee.

But wait – I hear you cry – that was at Heathrow! It’s very different in London itself – world-class restaurants, Italian cafes etc etc. Sorry to disappoint you but from the point of view of your average visitor – and let’s face it I’m depressingly average – London, and I’d go so far as to say, England, cannot produce a good cappuccino at a reasonable price. At least, not the way I like it.

And the reason?

Nobody cares enough to make a good froth. Simple as that.

So who cares, you ask?

I do.

It doesn’t matter how many shrivelled up bits of cake, tart, muffin, friand (friand??), wrap or sandwich you have in your glass cabinet, if your staff can’t produce good, firm, moist froth then you shouldn’t have Cappuccino on your menu board.

As you can see from the above I was feeling exhausted, picky and perhaps somewhat unreasonable that morning but I mean what I say about the froth.

Now where was I? Oh yes – back to Heathrow. Mind you I HAD been mightily impressed by the speed with which I’d been spat out into the vicinity of the coffee shop after leaving the plane.

I’ll tackle the joys of baggage collection and getting through Customs another day.

Bye for now……PS…I like the idea of the explanatory note about gunnels being at the end of the paragraph …. any thoughts?

Posted in airport, Coffee shop, Heathrow | Tagged arrival, coffee, humor, humour, immigration | 4 Comments

England revisited

Posted on June 3, 2012 by brissiemaz

This gallery contains 1 photo.

The world seems obsessed with all things British at the moment and rightly so, I guess. It’s not often their monarch celebrates 60 years on the throne (not for 350 years, I believe) and it’s been a bumpy ride at … Continue reading →

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