We planned, packed and checked. We set the video, arranged petcare and tried to look forward to going. We filled and charged our mp3 players, selected books, and phoned for a taxi.
My father gets travel sick, as do I. His solution was...to take a tranquiliser. Presumably on the grounds that travel sickness pills make you sleepy and stop you throwing up, and seeing as tranquilisers make you sleepy....
These pills, um, made my father high. Stoned. Mashed. Out of his tree. So while we were travelling, he was Travelling.
I should note that my father is (a) seventy two years old and (b) long in the habit of criticising anything and everything, so that he can do what he really wants, which is to blame someone for it. He's quite gregarious, which means he likes to find new people to blame, and new people to sound off to while he's doing it.
On this day though, it was the gregarious, chatty part which shone through, as he chucklingly held forth on whatever thought was passing through his mind at the time, to whoever was nearby.
This included Heathrow's pretend-security staff. These are men in pretend-bulletproof jackets, carrying pretend machine guns. Actually, I'm told that sometimes the guns are real and not the plasticky things they were swinging on that day, but aren't loaded. These men were handing out leaflet sized questionnaires - asking the public to evaluate Heathrow's security and suggest improvements.
They dealt with the crazy old man's jokes about smuggling and terrorism with Professional Smiles. It's the kind of warm, friendly smile developed by anyone in a service industry who needs to Put People At Their Ease. Some teachers have an entire method built around smiling at the class to make it feel comfortable.
My father objected to being patted down, because it wasn't being done by 'a girl'. For some reason, the tall handsome strawberry-blond man in charge of touching up passengers said he didn't need to pat me down at all. Thanks dad.
On the plane, he twittered to each of the hostesses in turn, who demonstrated not just the Professional Smile but the Professional Very Brief Noncommittal Response. Eventually, the three of us found our row of seats and sat, scrunched like sardines with muscle cramp, for three hours.
Now, I'm not sure Finnair airlines actually has any planes of its own, because all the flights we were on were 'in association with' another air travel company - British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Quantas and others. But all were identical, and had the same innovation - small LCD screens which lowered to give the pre-flight safety announcement (in several languages), showing bad CGI renderings of A Passenger putting on his seatbelt, his oxygen mask and his lifejacket in the correct way.
This left the flight crew with nothing to do but stand mute and point at the emergency exits when the video mentioned them. But it did give us something to watch during the flight - silent, subtitled CNN documentaries. Or it would have done except that (a) all the passengers were trying to sleep and (b) the screen in front of me developed a fault and showed a psychedelic digital kaleidoscope instead.
Fortunately it had no effect on my mile high father - he watched with a vague, distant smile as the cabin crew tried to make repairs in the time honoured way, by hitting it. Then hitting it again when the first hit made the fault worse.
The in-flight meal was a new experience though - meatball and cheesy-potato sandwiches. Actually quite nice.
Eventually we landed at Helsinki airport, with a warning from the pilot to wrap up warm because Finland is a very cold country. In fact the temperature outside was minus three - about the same as back in Portsmouth at the time. I know it was -3 (and as low as -80 in the air) because this and other useful statistics were flashed up on the screens at intervals. Though I'm not sure the altitude estimate of '360,000 ft' was accurate - an extra zero in there, I rather suspect.
Helsinki airport has about forty terminals. I know this because we had to spend half an hour walking past all of them in an almost-circle to get from our first flight to the connecting flight. It also has signs in three languages - Finnish, English and (I think) Swedish. Plus the announcements add Chinese and French.
Finland has a large Chinese population - and I think many from other oriental countries like Thailand and Korea. In Saudi Arabia, the menial jobs tend to be done by Indians. In France, your hotel room will probably be cleaned by a black woman. In Finland, your chefs and waiters will be Chinese - and they'll have Professional Smiles too.
Our flight in and the connecting flight conveniently shared matching delays, so after another hour of staring at a screen that was faulty in a different way, we arrived at Ivolo. From where a cheery santa-claus-like man drove us for another half hour in his coach to the resort - which he turned out to own. Previously it had been called...Kamakura. Now it was called 'Igloo Village', because the guests stayed in...um, log cabins, referred to as igloos.
Having eaten nothing for over twelve hours, we stuffed down a three course meal in the village restaurant. Instantly regretting it and groaning with indigestion, we managed to pull each other the ten minute walk to our
I hope to be "Travelling" when I'm 72 too.
ReplyDeleteI'm very, very confused. But other than that it seems you had an interesting time - though not as interesting as your father! Is the parrot well?
ReplyDeletecaptcha: absons - makes the heart grow fonder?
I meant to say "interesting photos."
ReplyDelete