A New Beginning

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23.09.2012

I awoke to the sound of the alarm. The harsh high-pitched bell that rang on Joe’s phone as he slumberly awoke only to press the snooze button allowing another five minutes of sleep. My eyes opened to the ringing only to realize the hangover that had been waiting to rear its sleeping head.

I lay for a few minutes in the dark, in the silence that had followed the pressing of the snooze. I was thinking about the day ahead of me. Today was the long awaited day that we leave to travel Asia, our seventeen-hour flight would land in Kuala Lumpur at 1PM the following day.

My head throbbed and I felt sick but I rolled out of bed in preparation of my plans. The night before had turned into a very drunk one after I went for a drink with my dad at the local pub only to meet some friends after at my house and continue drinking.

I had packed most of my bag the day before but had left the hardest part till the morning, the frantic search for socks, but not before an unsuccessful attempt at curing the hangover with a coffee and a cigarette. As I sat in the garden alone the sun slowly lit the late summer leaves of the trees; the red robin, the palms and the cherry blossom tree that sat at the end burst into an array of amazing colors, red, green and brown as the sun light passed above the fence. I returned inside to find Joe had got up from the sofa where he had been sleeping in my room.

My mum helped me find my socks, about five pairs and completed my packing by handing me a pair of Birkenstocks, the sandals I usually wear on my time out of the UK.

My mum, being hung-over too couldn’t drive us to the airport so the plans were to drop us off at London Bridge where the over ground and underground trains could take us where we needed to go. It was when we walked outside that we discovered (and my mum remembered) that she had left the insured car at the party she had been at the night before. The only option was to take the untaxed, uninsured car.

I gave my mum a big hug as she bid me goodbye, my emotions seemed to fill my eyes. Love was never my strong point and I hurried off to catch the rather packed jubilee line to Green Park and then Piccadilly line to Heathrow terminal 5.

The tube was a battle to keep down the gurgling acid that was building in my stomach and on arrival at the airport I rushed to the toilet to throw up.

We checked in with a young Asian fellow at the Saudi Arabia airlines checkout desk and went for a cigarette, the last one for a while. The waiting lounge was a long wait with frequent trips to the toilet to throw up, my stomach bubbled around and it wasn’t until later on that the sickly feeling left me. We entered the plane to be greeted by the semi-masked Muslim flight attendants with smiles and warms ‘hellos.’ The small television in the back of the seat in front showed a variety of options, Joe watched men in black 3 while I listened to Adel’s ‘21’ album. I laughed as Joe complained to me about the Islamic censorship that avoided sexual scenes and explicit language. This is when I dawned on us that this was an alcohol free flight that was confirmed by a rejection to Joe’s question as he asked one of the flight attendants.

This, the shorter of the flights changed in Saudi Arabia where we sat in the smoking lounge enjoying the cheap middle eastern duty free B&H special filters. It was here that we met the first of a few friendly characters who began the conversation asking where we were from. The smart dressed lad sat with a cigarette in one and his I-phone in the other as he explained to us he worked on military contracts and was flying to France and then Germany on business, all through the big smile that peered from his dark skinned face. Another of the friendly character’s joined us in conversation and before long the whole lounge spoke as friends in-between puffs of their long awaited cigarettes.

The second flight, the longer of the two was enjoyed across three seats, as all spaces hadn’t been filled the hostess explained. So I lay across through out the night enjoying the seemingly more modern plane. Joe lay sprawled across the three seats in front of me and we both sheltered from the very cold plane under the provided blanket and pillows, drinking numerous cups of tea.

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