17.4.26

Stuck for 5 hours at Newcastle Flughafen, then 2 hours at Amsterdam Schiphol.

Newcastle

12:00am

I’ve completed the first leg of my journey now. A train from Durham to Newcastle and then a ride on the Metro. What do you even call them? The lines? The Green line? Yellow line? There are only two anyway, aren’t there? This is why I don’t like the Metro. 

The first part of the first leg of my journey was already fucked. My 10.50pm train was delayed indefinitely because of a signal failure in Stevenage. Surely nothing happening in Stevenage should affect my life even remotely. But OK. I get on the first train that pulls into Platform 2 and choose to stand in the toilet instead of even flirting with the idea of a fine. The train stops and I get out. We’re suspended over one of Newcastle’s godforsaken bridges; I stare out at the lights on the Quayside, unduly reminded of the time I fought to stay awake while being flat-out ignored by four navel-gazing, coke-snorting shitheads I had the pleasure of meeting for drinks by courtesy of my laughably self-important ex-boyfriend. I get to the Metro eventually. But again—why the fuck have they split Newcastle up into A, B and C? Why am I being accosted with an equation while I finger this interactive plinth for a ticket? I’ve taken the Metro about 15 times now but I guess the logic with which they’ve zoned these areas is some MENSA test I invariably keep failing. I just wish they’d use numbers.

So I get to the airport. There is absolutely nobody. I brighten up with this realisation; as I make my way through the overpass I decide to twirl à la Gene Kelly for the fuck of it. It brings me little joy. My momentum was lacking. Everything is shut except for a Greggs; in my head I shush her softly and tell her to await my £5 purchase with bated breath while I have a smoke.

It’s me in my flasher trench coat, this Marlboro something that tastes like shit, and about five forlorn families struggling to find their Uber. I enjoy the warmth of my ersatz companion and listen to Blue Sunday—I’m so tired I can just about take Jim Morrison groaning in my ear in what I suppose he supposes is a somewhat attractive tone, but not much else. 

I go in. Get myself a sausage roll and an Innocent juice, feeling like a 14-year old bunking off school with a dead Crystal in his pocket. Now I sit down and pen these awe-inspiring words for nobody in particular to read, perhaps two of my loser friends, one of whom responds too quickly and the other who has a quota of three statements per day. 

12:39am

A very handsome young man in a high-vis jacket just sat across from me and is now sipping his iced coffee. What is your role here, Apple ecosystem-toting Adonis?

12:46am

He is joined by his less handsome high-vis friend.

12:56am

They both have sausage rolls now. 

1.35am

I have done absolutely nothing. I am thinking of moving soon from this pleather bench to find a pleather armchair I thought I glimpsed from behind the EasyJet check-in, but the existence of this armchair is uncertain and the certainty of this bench is tangible (under my ass). I need to pee anyway.

2.01am

I am back on the pleather bench. My expedition offered no reward. There were two massage armchairs, the ones with coin slots, but there was a woman splayed over three chairs next to it with her socks off, and I’m not a Puritan but I do still believe some things are wrong. I’ve got a coffee in hand now and a fruit pot without melon, as I am allergic. Though I’m sure they cross-contaminated the shit out of this. What’s a little asphyxiation between friends? 

Do you ever look for newborn children in the check-in line to console yourself that God wouldn’t take so many lives so young? I don’t get too nervous on planes, but I’ve had many a conversation with those close to me that I am not so much scared of losing my life in a plane crash but rather the morbid reality that they wouldn’t let me take my curated capsule wardrobe onto the deserted island we yellow inflatable slide on. They only put one humongous strawberry in this pot, the cheapskates. An English teacher once told me that the adjective ‘humongous’ was improper. I have no clue what she was on about, but I think she had issues with control. 

2.10am

I just Googled it—she was right. I guess I’ve been projecting this whole time. The idea of taking a nap crossed my mind briefly when I sojourned to the little boy’s room, but I think I prefer the idea of torturing myself. I don’t understand why Catholics get all the credit for being ashamed, I do it not because of some guy but because I’m just like that. I’m simply better that way. 

Amsterdam has seen me more in the past 6 months than my own family. I can’t wait to be welcomed back into its primary-coloured, birch wood-laminate arms. The airport, that is. Whatever the fuck is outside is not my problem. The last time I was there I sat on what looked like a very stuffy office chair in a waiting area with much more vibrant and playful options—but I was deceived. I had made my decision now. I spent the 4 hours of my layover in this uncomfortably low, creaking rocking chair, reading Kitchen Confidential, trying to avoid eye contact with somebody I knew tangentially from my college in Durham sitting to the left of me on his laptop. We were very unlucky in that on the four flights total we had to and from Malaysia we were on the exact same ones. We smiled at each other awkwardly and did not talk once. 

I used to be quite scared of public spaces. I guess I assumed there was somebody who was going to snatch me. I think I’m a very kidnappable person; my innocent countenance and generally amiable nature primes me for being taken to a secondary location. When I was 8 my father assembled survival kits for my sister and I; from what I can remember they contained a length of rope, a flashlight, batteries, a penknife, and a whistle. One time when we went to the mall and he had to ‘take a leak’ I clutched the penknife in my hand and eyed unwitting passers-by warily, lest a small misstep necessitated that they be shivved by a girl in the second grade. There was no other way.

2.40am

My throat is scratchy.

4.09am

I got stopped at immigration again, like I always do. Today they were very curious about the strange essences and elixirs I had decanted into my 100ml Boots travel set bottles. After putting them in a magical, illuminated box to test, ostensibly, for bomb water (?), they decreed that I would be allowed to keep them and shoved my tray of stuff towards me with the callousness of an affair partner who no longer found the running around exciting.

I’m sat on a high metal garden chair now, dirty chai in tow, feeling very spiritually connected to two gentlemen who hail from this faraway land called Swindon…to my knowledge they must have invented it?

Amsterdam

9.20am

I don’t know if it’s because everybody is tall and blond, the three cups of coffee working their way through my system, or the 24 hours without sleep, but this place strikes the fear of God into my heart.

On the last plane

10:21am

There’s nothing like a red-eye flight and a black coffee to make a man feel more like a true red-blooded American. Pre-deregulation. When one could dream of empty middle seats, a dirty martini sloshing onto your lap, and the sonic equivalent of 15 leaf blowers obliterating your eardrums. Fuck Reagan.