These festivals, the international ones, have a flavour of their own. The flight took twenty two hours. I am flying to Australia. Heathrow was rotten to the core. Stress levels are
high.  heathrow to hong kong then hong kong to Melbourne. The great thing about Hong Kong and Singapore is the food at the airport. It is out of this freakin world.  I watch most of the white people flocking to macdonalds for a tast of home as the chinese and japanese
food stores quietly go about their business with no flashing red lights and mind numbing sensory attacks. The only sensory attaks here are in the taste buds.

I met a woman on the planeon the last leg. Suzie’s her name. Suzie did an international business degree. “but oi wish oi’d a been moor specific knowhatoimean”. Suzies  sister is the PA for the CEO of EMAP in the UK.  Now that is not a sentence to dwell on with jet
lag.  Just for the hell of it I ask Suzie to repeat as I miss heard her.   It was going to be a long journey. Suzie and her sister “we’re going into peeejaaaamas. See oiy make peejaaaaaaamahs for moi frinds and thoy jast lav em. Sow moy and moi seesta…” She
continues lightly, her voice danving with syllables like the way white australlians do .  Apparently London is a honeypot full of work and riches and opportunity. My father is a pilot who died  in a plane crash.  He really is. I have always wanted to say this while
on a plane. But it wouldn’t ring true. I was close to dropping the explosive line to Suzie.

It’s because I travel on my own that I latch on to others that are on there own. Its a sort of pot luck. I need the company and they need the company and it may make our time together go by faster. The only other place this happens with such intensity is freakin Prison.   One time a male student on his break tagged on to me. His conversation was
so vaccous and selfish that I gave him the slip at the bagatelle with a cordial “might see you on the other side”. it wass only when I was in my car on the way to the hotel that I realised that I’d promised him a lift to his parents as he was “clean out of spends” which is why he was returning in the first place. I think of it as a kind of justice for some of the throwaway things he was saying about his parents. Ugh there is a big business thing going on at the hotel. An assault of tuxedos  pitter patters down the stairs as i duck into the lift.

Please god doors close know. They remain open. NOW! And then I hear those rotten words “hold the lift” . I’m jet  lagged my nose is unable squeezed against the doors. I’m unable to reach the lift buttons. I can’t feel my feet. The lift raises to the 66th floor, the
party goers leave and I slump onto the floor as the lift descends.  It’s all rock and roll.