In time-zone limbo, time-related eating and drinking conventions can be abandoned; so while I was obtaining my gin and tonic, Tom went to get a cup of coffee, and a man at the next table to me ordered a quite delicious-looking Greek salad. I think we were there for three hours, at least. Every half hour, there was a time announcement over the tannoy, which I originally misheard and found somewhat overly amusing: ‘The time is now 7.30. The end.’ This led to me childishly giggling at this assumed absurdity every half hour, before realising it was actually ‘The time is now 7.30 PM’ which makes a lot more sense and is not funny at all.
I decided that in order to combat travel-induced feelings of awfulness, I was going to eat as much as possible, just to be on the safe side. After lying down for a rest on a nice, quiet, deserted upstairs balcony for a while [the sort of place I'd seek out as a teenager during youth orchestra concert trips between rehearsals, in order to a) read a book on my own because I didn't know anyone, b) avoid being seen reading a book on my own and thus advertising my loner-like status and c) inadvertently perpetuate the need to do this by avoiding any social interaction with other orchestra members which might eventually lead to knowing people in the orchestra] we went to a Chinese canteen place. I obtained and consumed a large vat of noodle soup [and Tom got more coffee] while the sun set, very redly, and my body clock screamed at me a little bit.
Flight no. 2 was shorter – Minneapolis to Portland – but had the concentrated annoyance factor of the seat in front of me being occupied by a five-year-old girl whose idea of an amusing game [she wasn't upset or scared, merely excitable] was to scream in that loud, shrill, Hollywood-small-child-being-nearly-eaten-by-dinosaurs kind of way, despite her Responsible Adult repeatedly and emphatically telling her not to do it. Fortunately she did stop after about ten minutes after we’d got on the plane, and while we still on the ground. If she hadn’t, I was considering breaking the Telling Other People’s Children Off taboo, which is quite a terrifying thought [although it does seem to scare children more to be told off by strangers than familiar admonishers, so is usually effective..]. To be honest, I can’t work out which would’ve been worse: putting up with the child screaming all the way, or putting up with the anxious uncomfortableness of having overridden another adult’s authority by telling off their child and then knowing they were seething at me for being an interfering cow for the rest of the journey. So it’s really quite convenient that neither happened.
I think we got orange juice on this one. Did we get Pretzels? I don’t remember. The orange juice on US airlines is really very nice though. My memory of the whole journey, and the journey back, is punctuated by brilliant orange-juice-receiving-moments.
