Lost in transit
(Horse and cart crossing a canal: Amsterdam, the Netherlands – I know it’s not strictly China, but I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for China / stray volcanic ash)
Finally!
KLM did as best they could, I suppose, given the circumstances. I ate my free sandwich, carried my free water, I slept a little on my free camping bed, drank my free coffee, made my free phone call with my free 5 minute worldwide call voucher and had a free breakfast with my free food voucher. Perhaps later this year I will book a flight with my free €50 flight voucher. What I really wanted though was just to go home. It’s amazing how a mountain of (usually desirable) free stuff can feel unappetizing, and grey.
I queued for over four hours to change my flight, from the moment I alighted from my Shanghai flight at 19.30 local time, to the desk at the head of the queue at midnight. I had almost been awake solidly for 24 hours at this point so I was verging on homicidal. I must have slept a few hours because I eventually found the mysterious M lounge, complete with fold-up beds forty minutes later. I got up at 6am so I should have had a fitful four hours sleep somewhere there. It was a very odd experience, stepping stealthily past sleeping children, adults curled into the foetal position and nocturnal elderly stares from knee level. All the blankets in this image have a person underneath and I couldn’t see the end of the corridor. There must have been hundreds of us. At one point in the night the disturbed and irregular whining of a child woke me. I recognised the sound immediately as one that my sister would occasionally make when she was very young; abject tiredness. That tiredness that gnaws at a child’s ability to function, rendering all parental diplomacy useless. The sound means “I need sleep now and if I don’t get it, I will groan and whine and cry until I do”.
I am now safely back in my flat in Glasgow and I am showered. Hooray! It has taken 43 hours door to door but now I’m ready to have dinner and go straight to bed. I was supposed to catch a 10:30am flight today, I was told I was on the waiting list for the flight and I assumed I was the first or at least 5th standby person. I was 43rd. I did not get on the flight so I had to wait until a delayed flight to Glasgow became available at 17:35. I did squeeze in a quick cruise in Amsterdam, on the upside.
– Today Rosie is tired, but back in Glasgow –
