Journal entry:N.B.: The journal I'm using for this vacation has sayings/poems/thoughts on each page. They are apropos on occasion, so I'm including them at the top of each day's entry. Because the length of the journal entries varies, some days may have no "Jane's Journal Page Notes," while others have two.________________________________________________Jane's Journal Page Notes: Sometimes she could be found daydreaming...
In the corner of her room
Where she could not be touched.
After getting up at around our usual time of 6:30 a.m., we finished packing at a leisurely pace, cleaned up the house, watched last night's "The Amazing Race," and generally were ready in plenty of time for our 2:30 p.m. appointment for the car. A stretch limo no less: hey it's cheaper than parking the car at the airport for two weeks, plus we don't have to deal with traffic at either end, an issue at the end, believe me!
Beast called his folks to get a medical update on his dad. I slept about 20 minutes in car. Sparky, naturally, used his time to play on his GameBoy. Shades of the weeks to come. We told the driver--I love saying that!--to drop us at the United counter, only to find that, even though they code-share, we had to go to BMI's {British Midlands} counter. So we took the train to the international terminal, found BMI. They informed us that because Beast and Sparky share the same first name, BMI had somehow sort of merged their reservation. There were two seats assigned, but they couldn't pull both of them up. We would have to check in at the gate area. I think that is the first time I've ever heard of a computer doing something like this...
The ticket woman assured us that everything would be fine; we had seats. So we left our bags with the (bored) TSA employees and went to find the Red Carpet Club equivalent. Very smart lounge--staffed by SAS but shared by all the Star Alliance airlines. It was just like being at Ikea, all blonde wood and silver-metal handles on things, looking very 60s school furniture-y. We had a great view of the tarmac and our plane. And of course we had food and drinks available. And Swedish-language newspapers. I love not sitting with the hoi-polloi. Especially since I am rightfully a member of the hoi. Or the polloi. In this case, it turned out that there were almost no seats in the gate area, so it was even better than usual.
Elizabeth called as we were waiting. She was in Boston waiting after her connection from Dulles. She said her trans-atlantic flight looked ready to go, but she’d heard there were delays from our direction, and wanted to be sure we weren’t having trouble. We should be good to go.
{Back-story: Elizabeth caught her flight from Dulles that morning to Boston, had a long layover and was scheduled to get into Manchester about 45 minutes before us. We planned to meet--at the Meeting Point, strangely enough--at the Manchester Airport and bring her with us in our rented car to Wakefield.}Once we arrived at the gate, BMI had moved us to the back row of the plane. Certainly not our favorite location; I was concerned that the seats wouldn't recline at all, but it seems that there have been some innovations in airline seating since the last time I sat in the last row! It has ups & downs:Ups-
- no one kicking us. This is a big deal: on my last overseas flight, Sparky was 3 and it was just the two of us. We met Beast there. Sparky pretty much slept laying across my lap and his seat. Between his very heavy head and the woman behind me kicking me every time she moved, I slept very little.
- not near bathroooms. People have no reason to be walking past us for any reason. Excluding the flight attendants, of course.
- plenty of time for Beast’s knees to unlock at the other end, while we wait for everyone else to empty the plane.
- flight attendants are very handy if we need anything.
- good standing area right behind us. A really large kitchen, almost as big as a regular house kitchen!
- noisy. That hasn't changed; the back of the plane is loud. And because we're right by the galley, we'll hear the flight attendants chatting and working.
- narrower seats? They seem narrower but maybe it is just because the armrests didn't go up all the way. They only moved halfway up, which is useless.
- very far from bathrooms in case of urgent calls of nature.
- we will be last off the plane. Which always sucks.
All the flight attendants and pilot are British. Good introduction to the accent. As if we could even attempt to understand the pilot! Along with the Standard Issue Pilot Mumble and Bad Mic, he's got a northern English accent. The cabin uniforms are very retro: the women have little Pan-Am hats and black wrist-length gloves. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the lack of air circulating before take-off; the lead flight attendant gave everyone clearance to take off the hats and gloves.
We’ve been in the air 40 minutes; we’ve gotten 2 drinks, a travel kit (notepaper, eyemask, toothbrush/paste, a pen I used for many of my journal entries, socks). The socks went right on my feet. Dinner should be pretty soon. We’re over Detroit.
What has been noticeable:
- light crowds in the airport--really, none (only had to wait very briefly at security) There were a lot of people in the ticketing area of the International Terminal, but the concourse wasn't too bad.
- lots of TSA shirts, lots of cops
- felt either very worldly or very third-worldly in the ticketing area. I heard what sounded like every language on the globe, mostly loud. Saris, modified burkas, and headscarves on many women. Mayhem in front of some of the airlines. NOISY!
- none of BMI’s ground crew are noticeably British
- the video/sound/game thing in each seat is cool--
18+ channels of movies
18 channels of sound
4 camera angles to see where we are
6 video game packages --
_____________________________
ABOUT 6 HOURS LATER
Soon after writing the above, Beast developed a horrendous spasm in his middle & lower back. It hit him just as they were getting ready to take the carts down the aisle and start serving dinner. He scared the heck out of one of the flight attendants who thought Beast was having a heart attack because of the grimace on his face. The look on the guy's face was priceless. I took pity on him and assured him it was "nothing to worry about." Well, I was wrong. Several moments of panic ensued, but I finally got Beast to stop being a hero and take some medicine. The flight attendant offered "Aspirin or Paracetamol." Luckily, there was a nurse across the aisle from me who gave me some basic advice, explained what Paracetamol is, and told me he'd be fine taking both if he flipped back and forth every two hours. She was a blessing! One of the flight attendants has been really nice to him--dosing him with meds and extra pillows.
For awhile he thought he wouldn’t even be able to drive -- YEEPS! He did eventually slept some, but there was a lot of intermittent groaning and grimacing. We were surrounded by British people, and being British, whenever Beast groaned in pain, they all just gamely ignored him and slept on. Or at least continued to feign sleep. Sparky tried to sleep--he may have gotten 90 minutes of nap. I got maybe 45 plus another hour of dozing. I had no place for my feet and Sparky was lying all over me so he wouldn’t bother Dad. The crew was doing dishes after dinner right behind us and chatting, so it was pretty useless to really try to sleep, when really all I was doing was worrying about Beast. It's gotten very cold. Thank goodness I had my jacket AND a blanket. Now I’ve changed into pants, so I’m better, but my feet are still chilly.
Only about 40 minutes left of the flight. Beast spent the last couple of hours on his feet stretching his back. He did manage to get it to pop, which means it probably wasn't a spasm after all, just a strained muscle. Football been berry berry bad to him! We've had some fun conversations with the crew: the nice woman is getting married in 2 weeks, so she was interested to hear that we are on our way to a wedding. Another woman grew up in Durham--where we are headed next week--and now has friends that live quite near Wakefield, where “our” wedding is.
This is a reminder that I must remember to write BMI and thank Michelle for being some wonderful and helpful on the flight.
I also need to make another list of souvenirs needed to purchase as Thank Yous for people at home...{which I did, but omitted here.}
I never did figure out the video/audio/game system. Guess we'll just have to fly BMI again sometime.
