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freckles_and_doubtGawsh. This is the first time I've travelled in Europe since I started blogging. It feels very odd to be posting from Dorset, not the least because mother's computer uses Explorer (ritual ptooey) and has the quote key in the wrong place. Think of this as the cracking of a champagne bottle across the bows of the perambulation tag, whose outings have hitherto been entirely local. Also, I think you may be in for infrequent, giant posts rather than my usual inconsequential fragments. Brace yourselves.
Cape Town airport is undergoing a massive overhaul for 2010, when we host the (cower) World Cup1. In practical terms this has two main upshots: (1) ongoing and total chaos with parking at the airport, since they've basically been constructing the dimensional folds necessary to fit in new parking garages for upwards of two years; and (b) a rather gaudy simulation of the new terminal in giant screens as you queue at passport control. Said sims employ computer graphics circa approximately Wolfenstein 3D, and feature giddy James-Cameronesque camera passes through enormous and seductive vistas of glittering chrome, glass and other media likely to suggest slick and efficient passing of passengers like so much suspect Tex-Mex. Unfortunately the animation of the virtual people who inhabit the sim is extremely dodgy: they lurch about the environment, suggesting not The Airport Of The Future so much as The Airport Of The Future Under Zombie Attack. Fortunately the Undead Denizens are also perfectly equipped to represent my actual limping stumble, bumping into things, after a thirteen-hour plane flight.
I can't sleep while sitting upright, which means I can't sleep on planes. Intercontinental flights are thus strange Twilight Zone experiences, in which the basic shrinkage of one's universe to a tiny, claustrophobic vista of adjacent seats and cramped muscles becomes inextricably involved with all the movies I watch, so I'm subsequently unable to separate my own experiences (this time round, quite epic and unlikely nausea from a minor gastric bug plus travel-sickness) from the 3am absorption of, say, Mama Mia. It is also a necessary corollary that any cinema I watch must be either light and fluffy or pre-digested, as otherwise it makes no sense whatsoever to my shrinking, befuddled brain.
In the former category, re-watching Quantum of Solace offered, in fact, a quantum of solace. In the latter, the cheesy antics of Mama Mia (a movie redeemed solely and marginally by Meryl Streep, who's fabulous, and by my own addiction to spontaneous giant dance numbers) were in good company with the latest Wallace and Grommit (dough! a theme for claymation that has been inevitable since time began!) and with Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, a thoroughly heartwarming little flick with endearing leads and an inevitably lovely soundtrack, although there's one cellphone-in-toilet scene midway that should be avoided by anyone already fighting the gag reflex. Fragments of watching for the sake of argument were also useful - the first half-hour of The Day The Earth Stood Still revealed enough giant plot holes for me to be able to mock it significantly in future, and 45 minutes of Twilight were, if anything, slightly worse than the completely imbecile teen dreck I'd been led to expect. I lasted all of ten minutes of Hancock.
However strong my impulse which still finds the moment of actual surging uplift from terra firma incredibly sexy, the flight was, unfortunately, the one which tipped my flying experience from "Whee! Clouds! no hands! Magic!" to "aargh! get me off this plane! orang-utans wouldn't put up with this, it's stupid." We sat on the tarmac in Cape Town for half an hour after our scheduled departure time, while the crew warbled apologetically about "outstanding paperwork". What with being unable to eat from nausea and consequently light-headed from more than sleep dep, I swear there was a twenty-minute stretch somewhere over Central Africa where we entered a möbius state that endured for about seven hours while Mama Mia! recycled plot points, before we eventually blundered loose. Then Heathrow kept us sitting on the tarmac for forty minutes before they'd let us park, while I suppressed not only the gag reflex but the desire to slay six and make for the exits.
On the upside, England is strangely beautiful, with drifts of daffodils all over the show. The country is still doing that gut-tearing, tear-jerking thing it does of randomly embodying bits of my childhood reading, so we pass a rookery, or hawthorn in bloom, or a magpie in a field, and suddenly I'm in tears.
We leave for the France flight at 3am tomorrow. I'm going to bed now. Wish me luck.
Cape Town airport is undergoing a massive overhaul for 2010, when we host the (cower) World Cup1. In practical terms this has two main upshots: (1) ongoing and total chaos with parking at the airport, since they've basically been constructing the dimensional folds necessary to fit in new parking garages for upwards of two years; and (b) a rather gaudy simulation of the new terminal in giant screens as you queue at passport control. Said sims employ computer graphics circa approximately Wolfenstein 3D, and feature giddy James-Cameronesque camera passes through enormous and seductive vistas of glittering chrome, glass and other media likely to suggest slick and efficient passing of passengers like so much suspect Tex-Mex. Unfortunately the animation of the virtual people who inhabit the sim is extremely dodgy: they lurch about the environment, suggesting not The Airport Of The Future so much as The Airport Of The Future Under Zombie Attack. Fortunately the Undead Denizens are also perfectly equipped to represent my actual limping stumble, bumping into things, after a thirteen-hour plane flight.
I can't sleep while sitting upright, which means I can't sleep on planes. Intercontinental flights are thus strange Twilight Zone experiences, in which the basic shrinkage of one's universe to a tiny, claustrophobic vista of adjacent seats and cramped muscles becomes inextricably involved with all the movies I watch, so I'm subsequently unable to separate my own experiences (this time round, quite epic and unlikely nausea from a minor gastric bug plus travel-sickness) from the 3am absorption of, say, Mama Mia. It is also a necessary corollary that any cinema I watch must be either light and fluffy or pre-digested, as otherwise it makes no sense whatsoever to my shrinking, befuddled brain.
In the former category, re-watching Quantum of Solace offered, in fact, a quantum of solace. In the latter, the cheesy antics of Mama Mia (a movie redeemed solely and marginally by Meryl Streep, who's fabulous, and by my own addiction to spontaneous giant dance numbers) were in good company with the latest Wallace and Grommit (dough! a theme for claymation that has been inevitable since time began!) and with Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, a thoroughly heartwarming little flick with endearing leads and an inevitably lovely soundtrack, although there's one cellphone-in-toilet scene midway that should be avoided by anyone already fighting the gag reflex. Fragments of watching for the sake of argument were also useful - the first half-hour of The Day The Earth Stood Still revealed enough giant plot holes for me to be able to mock it significantly in future, and 45 minutes of Twilight were, if anything, slightly worse than the completely imbecile teen dreck I'd been led to expect. I lasted all of ten minutes of Hancock.
However strong my impulse which still finds the moment of actual surging uplift from terra firma incredibly sexy, the flight was, unfortunately, the one which tipped my flying experience from "Whee! Clouds! no hands! Magic!" to "aargh! get me off this plane! orang-utans wouldn't put up with this, it's stupid." We sat on the tarmac in Cape Town for half an hour after our scheduled departure time, while the crew warbled apologetically about "outstanding paperwork". What with being unable to eat from nausea and consequently light-headed from more than sleep dep, I swear there was a twenty-minute stretch somewhere over Central Africa where we entered a möbius state that endured for about seven hours while Mama Mia! recycled plot points, before we eventually blundered loose. Then Heathrow kept us sitting on the tarmac for forty minutes before they'd let us park, while I suppressed not only the gag reflex but the desire to slay six and make for the exits.
On the upside, England is strangely beautiful, with drifts of daffodils all over the show. The country is still doing that gut-tearing, tear-jerking thing it does of randomly embodying bits of my childhood reading, so we pass a rookery, or hawthorn in bloom, or a magpie in a field, and suddenly I'm in tears.
We leave for the France flight at 3am tomorrow. I'm going to bed now. Wish me luck.
1. Non-football-fans among Capetonians are obliged by charter to insert the (cower) parenthesis before the event name.
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no subject
Date: Tuesday, 31 March 2009 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, 2 April 2009 10:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, 31 March 2009 07:58 pm (UTC)And you had movies? You were lucky! I bet you weren't on (spit) SAA.
no subject
Date: Thursday, 2 April 2009 10:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, 31 March 2009 11:29 pm (UTC)The UK Tas flight can be up to 36 hours of hell that involves at the very least 27 hours of flying. I did the return trip three times with a baby under the age of 18 months. I now believe that after these experiences I am steely and that there is no small space with non-verbal travelling companion that life can crame me into that I can't handle.
Enjoy spring time in Europe...the flowers are so beautiful ( I think you made me all tearful too)
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 1 April 2009 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, 2 April 2009 12:23 am (UTC)I'm with you on the inherent sexiness of takeoff though.
Good luck, hope the skinned knuckles heal all fast like. xx