Flying to London’s summer skies

Last week London was having a heat wave. I know this because I would get hourly Snapchats from my daughter, Michayla, complaining about the heat. Her snaps contained photos of London’s buildings and streets, bathed in blue skies and sunshine, and stamped with 30C over top of them.

Understandably, I wasn’t that sympathetic. Back in Christchurch, I was waking to zero degrees and frost on the lawn, leaving for work in the dark and arriving home in the dark, and lamenting the last of the long weekends just past. So, three weeks in a Northern Hemisphere summer sounded like pure bliss.

My flight was due to leave at 9.30pm on a chilly, wet Friday. Friend and workmate, Jenna pulled up to the 5-minute drop zone at Christchurch International Airport just before 7pm and helped me plonk my purple suitcase, blue hard carry-on case, and big Country Road Mum bag onto a trolley. Hugs good-bye and I whisked my way to Departures. I found check-in busy. A long queue already winding its way around to the desks. Ugh, should have got here earlier, I said to myself.

Then I spot it just to the left, the Priority aisle – straight, short, and red carpeted. Yes, RED CARPETED! With a sign saying “First Class. Business Class”. Oh, that’s me, I whisper.

Clutching my golden ticket and passport, I bypass all the poor suckers in the Economy queue and go straight to a check-in desk. A short discussion about the contents of my bags ensues:

“Do you have any lithium batteries in your bags?” he asks.

“Yes, in the camera bag in my smaller blue bag, is that a problem?”

“No,” he says.

“Wait, don’t I have to check that in? I can only take 5 kg onboard, right?”

“Oh no, you’re in Business Class, you can take 10 kg,” he says.

Oh, perfect. I thank him profusely. And glow with the light of one who finds themselves amongst the privileged.

Now, by this point some of you will be eye rolling and thinking, “Big deal. We fly Business Class all the time.” Others of you will be eye rolling and thinking, “STFU, you wanker.” Seriously though, EEV. VERY. ONE. who’s lucky enough to experience Business Class at least once in their life is bound to pee their pants a little with the shear pleasure of finding themselves amongst the privileged.

At this point, you should also know that my flight to London doesn’t end well. There is some comeuppance coming. So, don’t be so hard on me.

In fact the comeuppance starts immediately – with a 2 hour delay at Gate 27. I did get to spend some time in the VIP lounge first, slurping down a large Chardonnay and sampling all the food delights on offer. But worried I might miss the boarding call, I leave the lounge 5 minutes before the scheduled boarding call.

At gate 27 now, waiting, waiting, and we still weren’t boarding. It was another 15 minutes before we got the announcement:

“Passengers on flight… blah blah… due to an technical problem… blah blah… engineers are currently working on it… blah blah… we thank you for your patience.”  

After that, the announcements simply said when we should expect the next announcement. First 15 minutes later, then 30 minutes later, then 50 minutes later. Each time, spoken first in Chinese and then in English. By the fourth one, they didn’t bother with the English version. And after that, they stopped announcing when the next announcement would come. I couldn’t go back into the VIP lounge. That had shut at 8.30pm.

Initially, I spent the delay wandering around Duty Free, giving myself a fright pressing the power buttons on the portable speakers (volume set to full bore!) and sampling all the perfumes. Next I wandered through the bookstore, picking up Big Little Lies for $13 (haven’t seen the TV show yet, but its a bloody good book!). Then I found a comfy chair further down the concourse, and settled in to read.

Finally, at about 11.45 pm we started boarding. Again I slipped through the Priority queue and down the skybridge to the plane. At the door I was greeted by a stewardess and personally escorted to my seat. She helped me stow my carry-on case and swap my shoes for airline slippers. She then handed me the menu and wine list, and explained that she’d be back a little later to take my meal orders.

Wow, I breathed. Look at all that leg room. I can’t even reach the back of the seat in front of me. And my bum actually fits into the seat with a bit of wiggle room. No, seat belt indents for days after this time. And look at this menu. Main Meal and Breakfast is what we’ll get. A pick of three breakfast options, and three main meal options. Breakfast is four courses, Main Meal is five courses. Sheesh, I’ll turn into Verruca Salt. They’ll have to roll me off the damn plane when we reach London!

I fiddle with everything. The lamp that arches over my shoulder. The seat recliner with its four arrows – footrest up and down, seat back tilt forward and back, as well as fully upright and fully flat options. In the footlocker in front of me I stow my big Mum bag, and find a little cosmetic bag of personal essentials – toothbrush and paste, comb, eye cover, moisturiser, and lip cream. Finally, I pop out the inflight entertainment handset from the centre console between my seat and the window seat, and bring up the Movie options. Before I get a chance to peruse them, the stewardess is back to take my meal order.

Thank You God. This is bliss.

We finally get underway 15 minutes later. No mucking around on the tarmac. We roll out to the runway and are hurtle down it without hesitation. Finally, we’re in the air.

Being the weirdo that I am, I immediately start calculating what impact this delay will have on my second flight from Guangzhou. If we’d left on time I would have had a four hour stopover, but we’ve eaten into that quite drastically now. I flick to the flight information on screen and work out that I’ll have about an hour between landing and boarding the next plane. Bugger. Probably won’t get to enjoy the lounge at Guangzhou then. Ah well. Never mind.

The rest of the flight was uneventful. I was seated next to a quiet, polite, young Chinese guy who barely spoke a word to me. At meal times, the stewardess set up our tray tables with white cloths and gradually served the small bowls and plates of each course (none of this ‘all on a tray at once’ nonsense!).

Soup Course – Spicy Tomato

Main Course – Beef with mashed potatoes and beetroot salad

Dessert and Cheese Courses – Creme Caramel, fruit salad, and assorted cheeses

Breakfast – Chinese cocoa pops and fruit
Also had a omelette with hash brown and bacon, but ate it too fast to photograph it!

When that was cleared away and the cabin lighting dimmed, I flatten my seat and attempted to sleep. I don’t sleep well on planes and lying flat made no difference. Its still noisey and awkward for someone of my size to find a comfortable position. I dozed, and read, and watched Logan instead.

We landed in Guangzhou to a foggy 29C morning and no air bridge. At the door, stairs took us down to a beige VIP minibus for First and Business Class passengers. My annoyance at the heat, the small seats, and the wait while everyone got on, soon disappeared as I watched Economy passengers being crammed onto bigger articulated buses, many of them having to stand. Immediately, my blessings were counted.

After a slow circuit around the various terminals, we were bundle off the mini bus, those of us transiting to London directed up the escalator to Customs. Here I found a long, snaking queue full of sweaty white people in front of three Customs counters. Ugh, I said to myself. And in this heat. I reluctantly got in the queue.

But, wait! There’s a Priority queue! Oh, joy! That’s me again.

I duck under the strip barrier and straight to the counter. Flick, flick and stamp, stamp of my passport pages, and we’re all done. Boarding is not for another hour and you have time to rest in the VIP lounge, she says.

Up two escalators and out on to the main concourse, I that discover my gate is back down two escalators on the other side. Once at the bottom I find crowds of hot, flustered people spread across a long concourse, waiting at four difference gates – A01 to A04. Mine’s A03, but we’re not boarding yet. With no sign of the VIP lounge at that level, I take a hot, sweaty lift back up again to the main concourse and ask for directions at the information desk, only to discover that I walked past the VIP lounge as I exited Customs.

At the door to the lounge, my boarding pass is scanned and I’m waved in. I find an unoccupied lounger seat at the balcony window, between a European husband and wife and an Asian gay couple (who keep looking at me curiously, like I’m in the wrong place). I settle my bags, grab a bottle of cold water and a can of cold Coke from the fridges, slip off my shoes and attempt to mount the lounger without tipping it over. No wonder they’re starring at me. It’s so hot and I’m sweating so much, I must look like a boiled tomato. I hold the can of Coke against my face and try to log-in to the wifi.

Sitting at the window was probably a mistake. Choosing this lounger was definitely a mistake. I’m still hot and now prone like a beached whale, trying to send messages to say I’m in China and fine. I send a message to my daughter and try to post photos to Facebook. Every 2-3 minutes a hostess wanders around shouting boarding announcements. Not exactly relaxing! And just when I’m starting to cool down she shouts ours.

Back down to the gate, back on a VIP minibus, and back on the road to our plane, I’m grateful I didn’t fly Economy with this airline, and particularly to this airport. We find our aircraft out on the tarmac, miles from a terminal with no airbridge. Its the old fashion steep stairs again. I find seat 13C right behind the entry door, heat gushing in. I’m sure this is not the seat my travel agent reserved for me but at least I’m not stuck in the back with the poor sods in Economy. So I stow my bags, take off my shoes, and wait.

Across the aisle is one half of the gay couple from the VIP lounge. He’s telling the stewardess that they’ve been seated apart, his partner is in the section ahead of the entry door. She’s trying to board passengers and has no time for his complaint right now. I can see his partner looking anxiously back at us from across the way, hoping his partner finds a solution.

Wait, I’m the solution!

In a break between passengers rushing past us, I lean over and ask him if he would like his friend to swap with me. They wouldn’t be seated together, but they would be across the aisle from each other. He looks so happy and so grateful, he can’t contain himself. Barely have we agreed and his partner is on his way to us and my guy has grabbed a passing stewardess to explain. I grab my shoes, un-stow my bags, and head forward to the other guy’s seat.

Yes, this is much better. I think I got the better side of the bargain here. And I made that couple happy.

I’m punished immediately, of course. No good deed, and all that. I’m seated across the aisle from the older man from Christchurch who sat behind me in the VIP minibus to the terminal earlier. During the short ride, he’d bitched about the airline, how he wasn’t impressed with their Business Class, and how his daughter had taken a trip with St Margarets School to Guangzhou and they’d all gotten dreadfully sick with food poisoning from the chicken they’d eaten on the flight.

Of course, once I’m newly seated, he jokes about me following them and tells me the food poisoning story AGAIN. Fucking delightful!

Let me take a moment here to say this:  Why do some men around my age (nearly 50!) and older turn into complete and utter bores? Seriously, why? Have they always been bores, or does it hit them at retirement? Were they the guy in the office who told the annoying weekend stories over the water cooler, or did they actually have something interesting to say back then?

It’s the wives I feel sorry for. Bet you didn’t see this coming, love, when you married him at 22 years of age, a bright future ahead of you. And here you are now, 40-50 years on, having to look interested while he bores everyone around him to tears with the stupid stories you’ve been hearing for decades.

If ever I feel a little lonely, I just think of moments like these and genuinely thank God that I’m spared that future, living the rest of my life with a bore. Anywho, back to my story.

Blessedly, we take off on time and he doesn’t speak to me again. The rest of the flight is pretty much the same as the first. Spent enjoying personally served meals, reading Big Little Lies, watching Hidden Figures, and attempting to sleep (again to no avail). We land at about 2.30pm London time and I’m one of the first off the plane. Its a long walk to Immigration, but I have a Fast Track card and, after answering some unnecessarily probing questions, like What kind of Editor are you?, I get through the other side in less than 15 minutes.

At the baggage carousel, I message Michayla between scanning for my purple bag on the conveyer belt. Time passes – 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. I do several circuits around the belt and through clusters of bags that have already been pulled off the belt. Other people are also looking for their bags. Including the bore and his wife. Oh, he is so NOT going to be happy with this, I think to myself.

Umph. Well, it looks like my suitcase didn’t make it with me. I’m so tired, my eye balls are almost falling out of my face. I can’t even muster the energy to be upset about it.

I trundle over to the counter and wait my turn to talk to the Baggage Desk attendant. He hands out forms and takes our details. They should arrive on the 7.30am flight, he says. Then they will begin delivery about an hour later, he says. You should get your bag before noon, he says.

It’s 1.30 pm the next day. I still have no suitcase.

See, I told you there would be comeuppance.

The worst part is that my accommodation is on Heathrow’s flight path. All morning, the airplanes have been laughing at me as they regularly roar overhead!

UPDATE: My bags were finally delivered at 3.30pm by a chap with a lovely East London accent.