I Went To A Land Down Under - Part One

Last January, wanting to see Eldest Daughter under better circumstances than the last time I’d seen her - she came home for a month immediately after Significant Other died - and getting seriously hacked off with the snow, I decided to visit Australia for the first time. It would also be an opportunity to meet her boyfriend, Captain Oz, and his family.

At the beginning of February, Youngest Daughter dropped me off at Heathrow at stupid o’clock in the morning and as check-in opened, I was waved onto the red carpet area in front of the First Class desk.

Wahaaay, RESULT!

I stood there, outwardly ready to graciously accept first class travel, inwardly jumping up and down with excitement. But there was no upgrade for me unfortunately - they were just spreading the passengers across the desks to speed up check-in.

Sod it.

Then I thought ah well, I’ll just pretend I’m going to fly First Class.

I have to say, I felt very smug dead chuffed, even though my First Class status was a total non-event. I was enjoying the moment. In my head (a.k.a. la-la land), I was saying to the queuing passengers, “Look at me, I’m at First Class check-in. Yes, me. First Class. Checking in. Oh yeah.”

However, pride always comes before a fall.

I put my suitcase on the scale and the guy, who was a very nice man (but not nice enough to upgrade me), informed me it was overweight. He suggested I remove some items from the case and put them into my hand luggage (now, in la-la land, an upgrade to First Class would have counteracted the overweight case, but it was not to be).

So there was I, with my face matching the colour of the carpet, sitting on the floor, thinking I was being gawped at by other passengers, scrabbling around in my suitcase, taking things out, trying to keep my underwear in, getting the case re-weighed, only to find I hadn’t removed enough.

I felt like a total prat. Served me right.

The check-in man took pity on me, and gave me a shoulder bag to put all my books, magazines and chocolate into (mega-sized bars for Eldest Daughter, who misses Cadbury’s), to carry onto the plane.

After the first flight to Dubai, lasting six and a half hours, followed by a mind-numbingly boring stopover of five hours, I then sat on another plane for what felt like a week, but was actually about thirteen and a half hours, to Sydney.

During the flights, for a bit of interest, I was hoping we’d hit some turbulence. I love turbulence. Seriously. A couple of times we were instructed to put our seat-belts on and I eagerly awaited the plane to start bouncing around, but ended up severely disappointed when it didn’t happen.

After landing, one of the next tasks was to get through border control.

I stood in front of the desk and handed over the completed immigration card and my passport.

The guy looked at my passport.

He looked at me.

He looked at my passport again, frowned, then raised his eyebrows and said, “That’s not you!”

I was tired, my eyes felt like they had bags underneath them that could hold a month’s worth of shopping and I desperately wanted a shower. I was just about to reply that the photo wasn’t great (it’s so bad, I have a strict need-to-view policy – if you don’t need to view it, you are definitely not seeing it) and that I was knackered when he said, “There’s no way you’re that old!”

“Um…” I responded.

“Strewth! You’re looking good for your age!” (He said strewth – yay!)

“Um…” was my witty reply.

“Well, have a great stay and I hope I’ll see you around.”

“Um… thank you so much,” was my typically British response.

When I related this to Eldest Daughter later, she rolled her eyes and sighed, “Oh Mother. You pulled.”

I did?

Strewth.