Foreign 1: Of What Is Known As...

Whereas I would have been content to sit in the departure lounge, someone has decided we should first board the plane and then wait 40 minutes for taxi clearance. We're going fucking nowhere in seating unfit for battery hens and in close proximity to people I neither know nor like. The pilot has the cheek to thank me for my patience and understanding, because I don't remember expressing either of those sentiments. This in addition to my two particular hates of air travel: 1) the inability to move in any direction other than toward the screens showing the latest Hollywood drivel 2) Personal hygiene is hindered by the difficulty of washing hands and face (more so on the 5 hour flights to the Canaries) without having to disturb everyone else and standing directly in everyone's view waiting for the toilets to become free. I do not like, to quote Bender, being "wrapped in grease".

I can stand being on a plane taking me across Europe in 3 hours. My tolerance for being on a plane yet to depart, taking me nowhere in 40 minutes is incredibly. Fucking. Thin. Half of the passengers will die from deep-vein thrombosis before we take-off. According to the lead stewardess, we're 'making plans for departure'. Since I'm repeating myself and we've actually, physically moved from our previous position, I'll leave this for a while until after launch. Calm as Hindu cows.

2354 (UTC+2)
Just after I finished my previous sentence, I noticed the internal plastic layer of my window was loose and I could smell Kerosene (from my position behind the wing) as the engines started. I didn't pay my usual attention to the launch, as I was more concerned with wether the window would hold at altitude. Imagine my heightening alarm when I could hear a faint hissing sound as we ascended. Of course, I had been up since the previous day, was tired, irrational and would probably have bought a lottery ticket, if I hadn't quickly fallen asleep and got over the non-issue.

Sleeping on a plane is supremely irritating - shift left, shift right, one's head suddenly drops forward from the useless headrests, *wah?*, briefly awakening only to fall asleep again. I didn't eat anything on the plane (apart from the fact there was no in-flight meal) - indeed, for the past two days until this evening, I hardly ate anything. As this post is becoming dangerously non-chronological, I'm restarting from 24 hours ago...

Having quenched my need to watch Empire Strikes Back, I started downloading Jurassic Park on Saturday night, hoping to watch it before having to leave for the airport at 0400. By 0030 I still only had 80% and decided to go-ahead and watch that much anyway. The last time I saw the opening scene must have been on BBC1 a few days before the May 1997 General Election. I saw Jurassic Park with my dad when it was released in 1993. Back then, the town didn't have a cinema, so you had to travel up the motorway for 30 minutes to the UCI in Clydebank - for many years I'd see a film on my birthday up there, and I was enthralled by the motorway at night. I can't remember being in the cinema watching the film - maybe as a 7 year-old I experienced the scenes almost as if I was there with the characters - not really a spectator watching a projection. It's hard to explain, I've always known the animals escape and so on, without the memory of seeing it for the first time.

I only got up to 97 of 120 minutes, just before my (and evidently a lot of other people's) favourite character, Robert Muldoon, is killed... "clever girl...". If I had only another 5 hours, I could have finished it before having to leave for the airport. I burnt another MP3 CD for the holiday and Kraftwerk's Autobahn just happened to be track 1. I took the opportunity to listen to Autobahn on the motorway - it really does capture the sounds and mood of road travel.

And so we get to the point that would have followed my observation of having eaten little. It was still only 0500, but Glasgow Airport is far busier that Prestwick is as peak hours. We had bacon rolls in one of the cafés - £3 a roll. I'd hate to think how much bacon that had been somewhere near a heat source and not primarily comprised of fat would have cost.

Whilst in the queues, I found myself checking-out a blonde girl sitting bored with family - I'm a brunette-fancier, but she looked like/possibly was a girl I knew [of] in the year below me at school. As if one out-of-nowhere incidence of the "Summer Effect" was enough, having found an unoccupied table, I found myself catching the eye of a girl dressed in a blue top, sitting a few tables away, and then looking away upon eye contact. This continued a half-dozen more times, despite the fact that I was aware of what I was doing, and wondering what I was playing at.

Personality 1 thinks she understood I found her interesting. Personality 2 thinks I came across as her future stalker and freaked her out. When we got to the baggage area in Zakynthos, I noticed the girl in the blue top. I was hoping she'd get on the same bus and stay at the same hotel, so I could find out anything about her. It was becoming obvious I'd left rational thought in my bedroom where I could have gotten some decent sleep if the flight times hadn't been changed at the last moment. Both personalities signing off at 0100 (UTC+2).

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