Wait in lounge

I am being tested, severely tested. As well as my many New Year's resolutions, I also decided that I would give up alcohol for January. My poor liver was pleading with me to give it a break and who am I to deny one of my vital organs? It really hasn't been too bad and I have been using the time I would normally spend in a bar, running.  There has been lots of running. But today I find myself in an airline lounge with hours to kill and booze on tap. Thus far I have resisted but for how long I am not sure.

It was going to be easy to stay on the wagon, I had two relatively short flights  and was scheduled to land in Liberia in good time to meet colleagues and have a sober dinner. Alas this was not to be. Instead of being in the skies above southern Spain right now I am sitting in Heathrow where I have been since 5.30 this morning. I did leave briefly on a plane meant to take me to Brussels but there was a "bird strike" and we returned.

The whole experience has confirmed my view that I am not a good traveller. By that I mean that while I love to be in other places, to see discover new horizons and return to favourite spots, I am not good at the getting there, especially by plane. I find the experience of being a commercial airline passenger unbelievably tedious and irritating. Plus I have never been one of those people who manages to look stylish when she travels, you know the sort, comes through the arrivals gate looking super fresh, well coiffured and perfectly made up. I always arrive clothes crumpled, skin desiccated, hair a mess, make-up smudged. I never start out like that, it just seems to happen almost as soon as I walk into a terminal building.

Inevitably by the time I get on the plane, I am grumpy because I have had to get up hideously early to get to the airport hours before the departure time in order to get through security where I have been almost always the subject of a rather too intimate body search and the picking through of my hastily packed bag. This has then been followed by a ridiculously long time waiting in lounges with varying degrees of comfort.

Once aboard, I use all my Jedi powers to stop the person sitting beside me from catching my eye in a way that can only mean s/he wants to strike up a conversation - I can't do chit chat with strangers on a plane (of course if I am travelling with someone I don't stint witty repartee). Then I have a moment when I have to remind myself that it doesn't matter that I don't really understand how a plane stays in the air (yes, I know it is all about lift and thrust but I still don't get it) because thanks to the laws of physics  its being able to stay in the air is not dependent on what is in my brain. And then I laugh to myself for being an idiot before plugging in my iPod, closing my eyes and falling asleep until a member of the cabin crew tries to feed me.

And this morning, we were on track. I woke up at 0415 (some three hours after I had gone to bed - so wise), got angry with the cab company for collecting me late (I could have had those 10 minutes in bed), made my way to Heathrow and two hours after I woke up boarded a flight to Brussels. As I was going through the "it doesn't matter if you don't understand" routine, it occurred to me that the plane (an Airbus 319 I believe) was making a noise much like my on-its-last-legs washing machine on its spin cycle. It was very noisy and all a bit shaky. I was closing my eyes with the intent of catching 40 winks when the captain said something in Flemish which didn't sound good. To be honest very little sounds good in Flemish but whatever he said got the cabin crew going. Anyway, five minutes later we were informed that as a result of said "bird strike" we were now flying on just the one engine and so were returning to Heathrow. As if to underline the seriousness of it all when we landed, we were met on the runway by half a dozen fire engines. But I have had a lot of dodgy flights - lightning strikes, mega turbulence, no lights and a chanting hippie to name a few - so a few fire appliances were not going to upset me.    

What has upset me is having to repeat the security, searching, waiting all over again. This time with bells on because I have missed my connection so am waiting for a 1740 flight to Casablanca - too late for it be bearable but too soon for it to make sense for me to go home and come back later. Once in Casablanca, I will have a four-hour wait before catching a flight to Monrovia which will get me in at about the time I got up this morning - perfect. I have had to queue much more than I would have expected, pay for the privilege of printing out my boarding card at the airport and been searched for the second time in a morning.

But it hasn't been all bad - I have soothed myself in the traditional manner, purchases from LK Bennett will be delivered next week, and even better the lovely people Clarins have given me a complimentary facial. I just need to steer clear of the complimentary bar.