Music Tour- Day Nineteen

That morning, after breakfast, we all carried our suitcases down to the buses. As a result of moving the lighter, larger items to my suitcase and the smaller, denser items to my hand luggage, my suitcase was so light that I could carry it with one hand and my clarinet with the other. According to Mrs F, I looked like I was strolling down the stairs! Once I had taken my suitcase to the bus I offered to help some other people with instruments but nobody seemed too overburdened.

On the way to the airport, we had a quiz which included questions such as “How many hand towels did Jenny buy in London [to make up for the hostel’s lack of towels]?” (114 if I remember correctly) and “How long was the train ride through the Channel Tunnel?” (apparently it was only 30-45min!).

In the queue for check-in, Stevie J asked me how I was so I said, “Better than before leaving Canberra!” and when he asked why, I said that it was because I used to be afraid of aeroplane toilets. His response was something like, “Oh, they’re just a walk in the park now, aren’t they?”

Hilarious. It’s even funnier when you consider how much room you actually get to manoeuvre in those things.

When I had to check in, I tried to lift my suitcase with one hand again, except somehow I managed to accidentally swing it around and bang it into the counter twice before placing it on the conveyor belt. Funnily enough, it wasn’t because I’d gone even lighter than 15kg- my bag weighed 16kg or something, but the guy didn’t care. I think we would have only had to pay if the whole group (including instruments) ended up being overweight.

After I had checked in, we all compared seating allocations with each other. Someone commented on how it was probably going to be a big plane. I told them that when I was bored I looked up what type of aircraft, I found that we would be going on an A380 (currently the world’s largest passenger plane) for the flight. I then proceeded to be the most annoying person on Earth by telling them all about what happened to a Qantas A380 theyear before (one of the engines exploded).

Once I’d gotten past security, I had a job to do: I had to buy my sister’s makeup for her (she’d given me the money to do so, and a list of what she wanted). It was easy enough except I didn’t see the mascara she wanted the first time I went in. Fortunately, I decided to have a closer look and found it.

We then went to get lunch at a shop further down the airport. The shop had a variety of meals that required heating up in the in-store microwave. I got a hamburger, which was pretty overpriced, but I guess I should have expected that considering that that was pretty much the only food shop in the terminal (if not the only one). If I remember correctly a couple of other people had pasta. Once I had finished my hamburger, I finished off my chocolates, but not my lollipop.

Our flight was once again delayed for about an hour. When our plane arrived, however, there was some excitement and photo-taking amongst nerds like me who get excited by big planes.

Once I was on the plane, I sat down in my allocated seat, which unfortunately was a window seat, and listened to “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd. Not long after, Mrs F came and sat down in the aisle seat. Perfect timing. Soon, a year 12 boy came and sat between us. When the plane took off, the year 12 boy left and Mrs F and I were left with a spare seat (the plane was big enough so that there were plenty of spare seats available). Mrs F told me that I could have that seat as I planned to try and get some sleep on that flight as it was night time back home and I wanted to adjust my body clock.

Needless to say, my attempts were futile. I couldn’t sleep because my old phobia continually tried to haunt me. Eventually, I listened to the second movement of Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony (it’s played at the end of The King’s Speech, and it’s a piece of music that says to me, “Go forth with courage!”) and went to visit my old No. 1 fear. I told it off for not being loud enough (!), then went back to my seat to try and sleep again. Some turbulence came and felt as if it was rocking me to sleep, but unfortunately the seatbelt light came on and I had to sit up properly.

Later on, when I waited in the queue for a second time, the toilets decided to really “go for gold.” Two flushed at once and they both sounded loud even in the queue! When I was at the front of the queue, I decided to “walk off my nervous energy” and started pacing with the first couple of lines of a song I had written going through my head:

“Harsh it is, the path you travel lonely,
Fear awaits, but forward you must journey.”

As I turned around to walk off a little more of my nervous energy, I found, with some irritation, that there was a vacant toilet before me. To be honest, I think that’s possibly the only time I’ve actually felt annoyed at seeing a vacant toilet.

When I returned to my seat, I had an epiphany telling me why I was the most annoying passenger on aeroplanes.

I am the most annoying person on aeroplanes because I never shut up about aeroplane toilets. I never shut up when I’m IN them either, as I’m always singing or taunting them to calm myself down.

When the plane landed, everyone got up before the seatbelt sign went off. (Who doesn’t?) Mrs F said, “No, you can’t stand up! The seatbelt sign’s still on! You know the rules!” As if in defiance, Murphy Major, who was sitting in front of Mrs F, got up, stretched, and looked at Mrs F right in the eyes while casually talking about how much leg room the seats had!