Flight

So many false starts have cured my feelings of exile, no longer fully in my Canadian life I'm now anxious to get to my British one.
At the Departure gate, the same faces, scalding adversity has melted the ice of British reserve, we're comrades now, concerned for each other. How is the man who had tummy troubles, the other who took a fall leaving the plane? Two just as I have once done, are doing the dosie-doh of transatlantic relationships.
Finally in the air, too much has occurred to feel the ache, the wrench of leaving the city. We are flying into darkness. We reach Calgary and look down on a field of French marigold lights, like the lights of Vancouver on a Monday evening as I drive across the bridge into the city.

The plane is barebones. We are cramped in old, worn, love-thy-neighbour seats. The movie is on a single screen, it isn't any of the ones promised in the magazine, Johnny English, poor colour, Portugese subtitles. The soundtrack is played over the PA so it can neither be heard nor ignored.

The food is a chicken-like substance, resembles a chicken-like substance, ALMOST resembles ... you get my drift.

Food and movie over, the cabin lights are to be dimmed so that we can sleep, except that the lights cannot be dimmed, they seem to be wrongly wired, when the attendant tries to turn them off, the reading lights come on. He stands flicking the switch on and off.
But I pop a Nytol, cover myself with a blanket and sleep until a ham roll and half a cup of lukewarm coffee is pushed at me because we are nearing Gatwick.

Gatwick has some turbulent air and it feels as though we might bounce onto the tarmac, but we do finally land. We cannot however finally get off. We must await the pleasure of her Majesty's constabulary. Rumour spreads that two passengers have been drunk. Two passengers, maybe three, are taken off the plane, the police don't seem that interested. It transpires that the three have found the in flight meals stacked in the toilet and have been taking pictures to add to everyone's list of complaints.

So I'm here, my eyes feel like those time-honoured pissholes in the snow, and I've already scoffed a Sainsbury's prawn bhuna. I'm not sure it's real yet.