Everyone else I know is flying Ryanair to Ireland.
I know I’m not but I can’t remember the name of my airline.
It’s the local one that begins with a ‘c’, I keep saying.
When I do finally land in Dublin and see all the big green planes of Aer Lingus I realise my mistake….
Landing in Dublin was a distant concept when the alarm went off in my hermetically sealed, over-air-conditioned cell of a hotel room at 4.30 am.
The noise from the gambling machines and children’s play area just outside my inward facing window had kept me awake until after 1 am. I felt raw and puffy and cranky.
Re-packed the cases for the twentieth time this month and prayed the big one weighed a little less after my expensive trip to the post office yesterday.
The sun was forcing its way back up again as I spent another 4 quid on the Hotel Hopper to Terminal (never a more apt description) One.
I swear I gave the bus-driver a tenner but he gives me change of 5.
I’m flying BMI. That’s the one.
They calculate your air-fare on your weight divided by the weight of your suitcases multiplied by the distance you’re about to travel.
The smiling hostess icon on the Express Check-in screen informs me that my departure is from Gate 80 which is
A HALF HOUR WALK away….
Thiry minutes of brisk walking is ten minutes more than the recommended amount required for fitness and weight maintenance and usually doesn’t involve dragging two suitcases, plus a 2k handbag slung across your chest and your puffer jacket draggin on the floor.
And even if it meant that I would burn off all the overpriced apalling red wine I’ve been guzzling lately, at 5.45 a.m. I am not in the mood.
What about a bus ?
The Air France flight from Paris to Germany involved a fifteen minute BUS-RIDE from the terminal to the plane…
A HALF HOUR WALK !!!!!?
I set off with a heavy heart and a heavy load.
And that’s before I get to the Baggage Check-in.
A surly young man who refuses eye contact snaps the elastic tape barrier back, beckons me in, and mutters something about having to check the weight of my bag.
So, I wait.
What he means is, I have to put the bag up on to the scales.
Rolling I can do, lifting needs help. It’s not forthcoming.
5.9k over the limit.
Back out through the aisles of elastic tape I lumber. Back to the licence-to-print-money Cashier’s Desk.
Nobody home.
It’s 5.58. Maybe they don’t come on ’til 6.
Oi ! I’ve got a HALF HOUR WALK to do. I’ll need to set out soon !
And there’d better be a caff at the other end ‘cos I ain’t ‘ad’ny breakfast yet, init.
I’m even thinking in English now !
A yoo-hoo yields nothing.
Five minutes later a woman drifts in, doesn’t look at me, charges me 7 pounds a kilo excess, tries to print the receipt for me to take to her surly colleague back at Baggage but the maching breaks down and she has to take the lid off and stick a biro in it, init.
35 pounds stirling.
I should be grateful.
Germany to Paris cost me 85 euros.
I am a woman travelling for 3 months with the barest possible minimum of clothing.
I, the Imelda of Melbourne, am travelling with one pair of trainers (on my feet) and one pair of boots !
I deserve some kind of medal !!!
Not maltreatment by BMI excess-weight nazis.
Back to surly, non-weighing, weight-checker.
On to surly Baggage Check-in proper.
Incomprehensible accent even to a good ear like mine.
I have to ask her to repeat several key questions a couple of times without sounding too much like Marjorie Dawes from Little Britain.
Will I remove the old labels, she asks me through lips of tightly-drawn string.
I give it a go but they’re stuck fast and only get more stucker as I pull.
Do you have any scissors ? I ask.
No, do you have any scissors ? she snaps back. Or any other sharp objects.
No ! Because if I did I would use them to CUT OFF THESE LABELS you dopey twat. I think. To myself.
She stares at me, all open-mouthed disbelief, waiting for me to morph into Edwina Scissorhands.
I glare back at her like a petulant child and say firmly,
‘Can’t’.
We part, mortal enemies For Life.
And then.
My HALF HOUR WALK begins.
Will I eat here, where there is a caff ?
Or will I do the walk and hope for the best ?
With the words of my favourite Eddie Izzard routine - ‘Well, there must have been a canteen on the Death Star, musn’t there ?’ -ringing in my ears, I charge ahead to Security.
By now I have learned not to wear an underwired bra, so, I make it through the gate without a good and proper frisking before breakfast.
An electronic sign looms immediately ahead.
‘Gate 80 - 10 minutes’
It’s like the South-Eastern Freeway.
‘Warrigal Road - 40 minutes’
‘Toorak Road - delays’
Ten minutes ?
So.
Not a HALF HOUR WALK ?
Or did my exchange with Mrs Bitchface Baggage Hag count as 20 ?
Ten minutes ?!
I can do that.
In fact, I can stop for breakfast right here and now.
I start to feel really good, until I realise I have NO MONEY LEFT because the thieving, crooked bus driver fleeced me of my last fiver.
Chip-and-pin it is then, because, Lord knows, cash or no cash, you need a credit card to buy breakfast at Heathrow.
After my Bacon and Egg Toastie and mug of beige swill I’m ready to take on the world and its wife.
The ten minute walk goes by like 5, and I’m standing at a T-intersection in front of another sign.
There’s an arrow pointing left below the words:
‘GATES 70-78′
and an arrow pointing right below the words:
‘GATES 82-90′.
Can youpick what’s wrong with the sign ?
‘Excuse me,’ I say to the top of a desk, ‘there are two gates missing and I need one of them’.
‘No, no,’ says the desk. ‘Through that door. Gate 80 through that door.’
But.
‘I know. I know.’
Through the door to Gate 80, Brigadoon, into a lounge full of green chairs.
We are going to Ireland.
It’s 6.15 by now and an Irish voice is shouting over the P.A. that my 7 am flight to Dublin is boarding NOW and that everyone should just be getting a very big move on, if you don’t mind.
No-one moves from the green chairs.
A woman doing a customer survey for BMI Airlines with a woman opposite me, looks towards the ceiling and makes disapproving noises and reassures us all that this is indeed Gate 80 and that that announcement is just so wrong it’s embarassing.
Oh, Miss ! Pick me ! Pick me to answer your survey !
Please !
I know ALL the answers !
They’re not the answers you want to hear but it’ll fill up your sheet.
Sensing my eagerness, perhaps, she tries to slip away but the security door has snapped shut and we are all TRAPPED FOR EVER in the ghostly gate-lounge on the green chairs listening to piped misinformation.
Irish jokes aside, it’s almost funny.
Almost.
Half an hour later, safely on the plane, the captain announces that there will be a slight delay of HALF AN HOUR due to traffic out of Heathrow.
The rest of the crew, perhaps, doing the HALF HOUR WALK ?

Tags: THE ADDRESS BOOK, Uncategorized by jane
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Germany is very punk.
Leather jackets, buzz-cuts and lank pony-tails … and that’s just the women.
Boom Boom. No, but seriously folks…
I scandalised the good French citizens of Toulouse last week by eating a croissant ON THE STREET, OUT OF A PAPER BAG and wearing my home-made, reversible, long-sleeved tee-shirt, fashionably INSIDE OUT !
True dinks.
A woman passed me on the street then double-backed for a second, gob-smacked squiz.
A young woman.
She brought friends with her for the 2nd circuit.
In Germany I might as well be someone’s nana.
Deutschland is very…sort of… how you say in your country ?… white supremacist.
Almost British. Circa 1978.
Nose-rings, bovver boots and black everywhere.
More black clothes per square metre than the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts Opening Night party.
Young German women seem to be seriously height-challenged.
The world-wide, battery-chicken-nurtured tendency to giant children and large breasts seems to have passed rural Germany by.
Drifts of short girls with faces caked in goth-style white pancake and industrial strength mascara, piercings, Fudge overkill on the blue, green or yellow streaked hair – stiffened and layered like Cilla Black on crack – torn stockings and Chucks.
Converse must be making a fortune in Rhineland.
Converse and steel-capped cothurni ROOL OKAY.
Maybe I’m getting this impression because I’m doing so much train travel ?
Maybe the autobahns are jammed with BMW’s and Fow Vays (that’s VW’s for those of you playing at home) full of fashionistas ?
But where do they go when they park and get out ?
The parts of Germany I’ve been seeing have been quiet.
The big towns seem, spookily… like Adelaide….. cue Twilight Zone theme.
Train travel in Germany, however, I have to say, gets the Big Tick.
I had so looked forward to train travel in Europe, but the French TGV(very-fast-train) left a lot to be desired.
The German ICE – Inter-City Express – on the other hand is sensational.
Those big trains whoosh, almost silently, into the stations like Great White Pointer sharks. The doors buzz open and you enter a world of very clean, beautifully catered, very fast and efficient, comfortable train travel.
In first class they serve you in your seat – meals, booze, the lot.
On one of my Hildesheim to Braunschweig runs there was a party of women who had taken the ICE hospitality a glass too far.
Lord knows how many cities they’d been through but by 11.30 on this particular morning they were pissed and raucous.
A lot of shouting and flirting with starled, sixty-year-olds was going down.
I WISH I knew what the occasion was.
My money was on a beauticians’ bonding weekend.
That’s one of the many drawbacks to a lack of fluency in the local language. You can make yourself understood at the rail counter or in the cake shop (thank God ! just point that fat finger again, Jane), but you can’t get the entire gist of something like these wild gals.
And you can’t engage in the random conversations which are the staple of travel.
Which is a pity.
The best I’ve managed has been the odd joke with a newsagent or waitress. But the laughter sprang from relief that we understood each other to the extent of seeing the mild humour in a situation.
It dissipated quickly.
At the bus-stop in the little town of Dinklar, outside Hildesheim, I seemed to always catch the bus to and from town with a sprightly looking woman of about sixty. (Yes, almost my age).
I couldn’t help noticing her because she was always immaculately fitted out in my favourite colours. Full length black leather coat, striking red scarf. Red and black bomber jacket, black stilettos and leather pants.
She was very slim, immaculately made up and had long, greying, blonde hair piled into a neat roll on her head.
She knew everyone.
People on motor-bikes and tractors waved ‘Halloo !’ to her.
She automatically tried to strike up a conversation with me, and her frustration was palpable when I, the only other passenger at the bus-stop, didn’t speak German. She loved a chat and I’d ruined her day.
I knew just how she felt.
On yet another train from Hildesheim to Hannover a young man in the seat across the aisle from me suddenly leaned over and let forth a stream of German too quickly for me to grasp.
I trotted out my usual, pathetic, ‘Ich kann nicht Deutsch sprechen – sorry’ (can NEVER remember the German word for ‘sorry’. Maybe John Howard was German…).
To which he immediately replied,
‘Oh, okay, but do you have a pen I can borrow ?’
Sure I did.
‘Ich bin eine shriftstellerin’ init.
(The German word for ‘writer’ is suitably long and sibilant).
He wrote for such a long time with my ‘Kugelschreiber’ that I was beginning to wonder if perhaps he was a ‘shriftsteller’ too.
I also began to wonder if (a) he was ever going to give it back to me and (b) if there would be any ink left in it when he did.
He eventually did (a) and I felt more confident of (b).
He asked me where I was from and whether I was on holiday and I suddenly found myself having a lengthy conversation with a stranger. My first since the beginning of this trip.
He was a singer from Hannover, he told me. The choir he was in was off on a tour of Venezuela the following day.
I told him a bit about my book and answered his many questions about Australia – he plans to visit us soon.
We had such a lively conversation that I felt compelled to ask him how come he spoke such good English.
He grew up in Hannover, he said, but he was born in Afghanistan to an Afghani father and a German mother. There was a UN school where he lived and he opted to learn English.
We rabbited on until the train pulled into Hannover but when we parted I couldn’t help but regret the number of other interesting conversations I might have had in the three countries I’ve visited so far.
Sartre said ‘L’enfer, c’est les autres’, but maybe he didn’t get out of Paris enough.
I’ll make enquiries when I lob at the ‘Deux Magots’ tomorrow.

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I hate The Sopranos.

There, I’ve said it.

I’m bored by ganster/mafia-and-their-analysts films.

In 1987, 8 months pregnant, wearing an unavoidable orange and black polka-dot ensemble, I walked out of a screening of Repo Man at the Longford in Toorak Road. It was one of only two times in my life I have walked out of a film.

I find Jim Carrey films less boring, predictable and unfunny than mafia/gangster/shoot-em-up/psychological-angst films,    and Jim Carrey is about as funny as cancer.

That being said, I was disappointed by No Country For Old Men.

Why didn’t the Mr Bad-Wig-Scarey-Guy-With-The-Spaniel-Eyes shoot those little kids in the last scene ?

There they were, innocent as all get-out. They’d helped him. One of them had given him the shirt off his youthful, innocent, vulnerable shoulders. They were inadvertenly responsible for his car crash. If anyone deserved to die….
Why didn’t they get the fancy-new-way-to-kill-a-guy-with-a-gas-gun-gun treatment ?

He’d killed everybody else: innocent, guilty, passive, aggressive, male, female, old, young, hero, anti-hero, plus all possible interest in The End.

Wha-t ? Did the budget run out of gas ?

‘I knew when I read the book I just had to make this movie’ said the more articulate Coen brother. (Don’t ask - but the other one is the one who giggles a lot like an incontinent extra from Marat-Sade)
Why, Mr Coen ?

Why did you have to ?

It was a beautiful film. Landscapes like paintings. Landscapes reminiscent of all the episodes of Rawhide and Wagon Train and  Bronco you’d ever seen.

No Clint Eastwood or Ward Bond or Apache on horseback but…  those dead bodies in the bleak landscape. Those flies swimming in blood trickling from the dogs’ mouths…. That was ART-a-go-go. I could have watched it all night.

Come to think of it, it felt like all night….

I could have jumped out of my skin as someone else’s head was blown off, ’til the lights came up. That’s Entertainment.

Everybody dies.

It’s a metaphor, I know.

I am just a chick but I know stuff. Everybody dies and the world is full of psychopathic killers.

Well, of course it is.

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Day 1 of Febfast 2008(www.febfast.com.au).

No drinking for all of February !!! What was I thinking when I signed up for this ? And why did I have to pick a leap year ???!!!!!

29 whole days and nights of denial. I better lose at least a kilo and regain at least 100 brain cells.

Sponsor me !

http://www.everydayhero.com.au/JANE_CLIFTON

I have targets to reach !

Feeling confident today - the last 2 days have been alcohol-free anyway.

Come back to me on Day 3…….

8 weeks before blast off on the Grand European Tour and the writing of The Address Book.

First stop Gibraltar, my birthplace, on my birthday, April 10th

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