And despite every endeavour to fit seamlessly into the new time zone, things are not always what they seem...
Apart from anything, my UK time has been unusual if not erratic for a few months. My son says it's fine, I'm just becoming a real student !
(I never quite achieved the time-slip element of studenthood during a part-time MA running my own business, or a full-time undergrad degree with three school-age children, goats to milk and chickens to feed... funny that!)
Then there was the late night journey to the airport - not possible to get to Gatwick before 11 on a Saturday from the West Country. And a few hours drifting sleep snuggled up with my bags in the excess baggage area - a very good place to kip (as I'd noticed someone else doing when I wandered by). There's a small wall for privacy and bag security, the floor-polishing buggy doesn't fit in the entrance, it looks unappealing from the outside so doesn't fill up too quick. It's also one of the slowest places to get going early in the morning as people don't know they have excess until the checkins have opened, as I was soon to discover.
Confusion about different websites citing different baggage allowances for my ticket, the fact that several overweight bags had already been allowed through and "it's time to start to charge for some now" plus a stringently adhered 5 kilo hand luggage limit were not the only things to blame for my rather heavy bags.... but I couldn't help wondering if sleeping in the excess baggage area had somehow attracted this excess of my own baggage to the airline staff's attention! No, I didn't want to throw away the things I'd brought (!) and so it was ironically cheaper to buy an upgrade that allows more weight, than to pay the excess! Particularly ironic as this came with a bonus invite to use the 'number one' airport lounge. It's usually exclusive, but rather popular today given the number of other over-weight people also issued invitations. I can't help wondering if this is all a marketing ploy for so-called 'cheap' airlines to recover extra income...) So after my budget few hours on the floor, I found myself in a large leather sofa ordering eggs florentine (with wheat free bread no less!), fruit salad and cappuccino whilst using the free wifi access to create a new blog for my Canadian adventures - warp and woof: canadian travels, weaving my way, research practice with media on the move.
That still doesn't quite explain the time lag.
Next element I have to report was the very bad TV entertainment in upgrade airplane land, at least with Thomas Cook/Air Transit/Canadian Fliers (no wonder the information gets confusing...). But it meant time to work on the sounds of rocks singing and the magical creature of the Yorkshire Dales, so all is well if not up to date on latest movie releases as I'd envisaged.
Sleep drifts in and out mid-Atlantic, as it does on the bus between the airport and the mountains in the sudden realisation that spring in England was the best ever this year, and yet here in Alberta the land is brown or grey, muddy snow in places, and the trees still bare.
But the real reason I'm now wide awake and working some more at 5am on my Canadian blog site is that 5 hours into solid slumber the fire alarm went off and we (the other residents of this Banff hall and I) spent nearly 2 hours waiting in another building until all was declared well - the choking fumes that caused the alert having been identified as bear spray. It seems I have more studenthood to experience yet - but rather than the British fascination with letting off fire extinguishers in the middle of a Saturday night, here it's bear spray... at least I shouldn't get many grizzly's trying to raid my cupboards in the middle of the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment