Stellar view
(View from Stellar restaurant viewing platform at sunset: Singapore [thanks to Ying for taking the photograph])
I have made it back home again after a long couple of flights from Singapore. Due to high winds, the flight was extended to fourteen hours, but thankfully it wasn’t a packed aeroplane. I had the first chance ever to lie across two whole seats to attempt sleep. I don’t know what I was doing whilst prone as when I woke, the man on the next seat but one had disappeared, leaving me with three seats. An air hostess was rearranging the headrests on his seat and informed me he had been moved and I had the row to myself. I lay lavishly across the seats for a while with my BA fleece blanket tucked around me, semi conscious, wondering if I had forced him away; had I kicked him, dribbled, talked, snored or worse? Hopefully he just decided he wanted a little more space.
It was an emotional departure from Singapore’s Changi airport last night; Ying’s family and I had just been for a spot of fine dining in order to celebrate Ying’s dad’s birthday. The view from the restaurant was similar to this one from the viewing platform, vertigo inducing, to say the least – just after I took this, the skies became decidedly leaden and a lightning warning was issued on the open deck. A crackly Singaporean accented man read in a relaxed drawl over the tannoy, “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. A lightning warning has just been issued for this area. For your personal safety, please leave the viewing platform immediately.” In the end, I don’t think I noticed any lightning or even too much rain, but we weren’t going to hang about to tempt fate. Back to the airport. I left on a late flight, speeding through traffic, haphazardly changing from my dinner clothes in the car to save precious time. The whole family was behind me as I made for the boarding gate; Ying, his parents, sister and her husband were there to see me off with heartfelt embraces, and then Ying an hour later. I waved to them with my hand luggage of a laptop bag, dufflecoat (ready for returning to the UK), a bag of pineapple tarts (a gift from Ying’s sister to my mum), and a painted papier mache lion costume. More on that later.
This morning as I climbed into the air on the early journey from London to Glasgow, I watched the same burnt golden orange sun materialise, just as it had disappeared the night before, thousands of miles away. It seemed as if the entire aeroplane was sleeping except for me and that the dawn was mine. Somehow watching the sun fall and then rise over the course of this journey affected me with a feeling of great clarity at that moment, as if I were witnessing a cyclical motion, a completion and a refreshing. It repaired me from being a weary, emotional traveler and allowed me to enjoy those valuable minutes with just the rising sun as my companion. It all probably sounds rather trite, but it is all true – it was a very happy moment, one of those precarious experiences that can only be gained whilst travelling.
– Today Rosie is having a jet-lagged lie-in back in Glasgow, Scotland –
Have a good rest to recover from jet-lag.