August 16: Halfway to Paris. Hong Kong, Tired and Rambling

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Mild turbulence and a thunderstorm welcomes us as we descend into Hong Kong. The ‘refreshment meal’ has been and gone, and it’s dawned on me that airline food is a bit like my old school lunches. Different food of course, but a filler just the same.

We ate curried beef brisket earlier, and the chef has just dished out something described as cottage beef pie. What a wild imagination he has. It was OK, served a purpose, but it was like the old school lunches. You know, the sandwiches dad made the night before, wrapped in wax paper, and as dry as the Lake Eyre salt pans by the time lunch came around 15 hours later. It was usually honey, completely absorbed by the bread, or good old vegemite. White bread was the popular choice, which made the Sherry kids lunches untradable .

We ate Swiss recipe Vogels bread. Dad insisted this was a healthier bread, which it was and would be very popular today, but it placed us in the European kids category, with their smelly sausages, olives and other exotic fillings in their lunch boxes; the Untradables, the lowest class in the playground at lunchtime. East Bentleigh was white Anglo Saxon, with a smattering of migrants from post war Europe. We all got on but the food , now highly sought after, wasn’t too flash back then.

The next leg from Hong Kong to Paris is a long 15 hours but that’s why drugs were invented, right? Hopefully, with a little assistance, we can sleep through much of that.

I know most of this has no relevance to the trip, but we’re tired, now sitting at Gate 30 for two hours, and it’s nice to think back to the good old days.

Remember. We had no shoes, walked 10 miles on unmade gravel roads to school, had paper rounds in the middle of the night to get some money, and of course no phones, iPads , computers, or any other distractions.

Our family was fortunate enough to have a beach holiday each year at Rosebud for a month. The unbelievable fact is that 3 of us kids used to sit on the tailgate of the EH station wagon, with a rope across our laps- dad’s only concession to safety- from East Bentleigh to Rosebud. For those unfamiliar with the drive, we are talking 72 kilometres on the nice modern freeways .

These days kids get dropped off at school by car, a few hundred metres away.

Teachers aren’t even allowed to belt good behaviour into you any more. Never works, it was viewed as a challenge to endure. Life is more civilised now.

Still, it was a great time to grow up in.



I’ll report next from Paris, hopefully with something less self-indulgent.

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Photos

Waiting Waiting
11.17pm at Hong Kong. Only 45 minutes until takeoff

Comments

[Home and Away]

I'm pleased that the demonstrations at the Hong Kong Airport...
didn't stop you from transiting.

[sherrys]

Never in doubt !
Well, not quite Bob. I really didn’t think it would be allowed to drag on. I support their cause, but the negative publicity was beginning to show and they apologised and wound it back. We are in Paris in a room we love, even though the lift stops a floor short. The Hotel de Mines, Near Luxembourg Gardens and handy to rail and buses.