This is the first 5-or so pages of my write-up of my trip to China.
(I can't be sure of the time since loosing my watch on a brief trip to Liverpool.)
The cabin staff are going through the safety rigmarole. This time it is being done with a finnish accent, just to make it that bit more interesting. In the pocket at my knees is a 'safety information sheet.' It contains very few words so that foreigners (like myself) can understand it, and is drawn in a cartoonesque style. "I'd say in the early Mac style. Probably by a student of Alex Graham" I can hear Arthur Negus explaining. One picture depicts a bloke standing in the aisle leaning over a girl chatting her up. Much to the annoyance of the older, moustached man on the other side of the aisle. In the young man's hand is a cigarette obliterated by a red circle with a line through it. I think this means no smoking in the aisle. Or maybe no sharking.
I've been placed in the section of the plane reserved for people with spectacles. Both the people either side of me are wearing these indispensable fashion items too. I don't mind segregation if it means I don't have to sit next to children.
The Kid across the aisle has just said "You know everything, don't you mummy?" after the woman I assume was his mother agreed with his hypothesis that the plane did not flap its wings like a bird in order to fly.
We're now lined up next to an air india Jumbo. Both planes are revving their engines. It seems as though they are going to race. We've already had one false start - we got about 10 feet before stopping... Here goes... Nyaaahhhh, we left them standing.
I'm travelling to China by Finnair, via Helsinki. Every time I've said Finnair people have turned back to me and said "Thin Air?" Obviously confusing it with the airline for skinny people. Or maybe "Thin 'Air" the airline for balding people. For those of you likely to say "hah, serves you right for putting unnatural products on your hair," I now give you the opportunity to do so. Sometime on they way (by car) over to the airport, the top came loose on my bottle of mousse (wow, I feel a song coming on) and squirted all over my batteries and work notes.
Judging by the hostesses it's true what they say about scandinavian women vis-a-vis their blondness and attractiveness. The steward even has one of them moustaches always sported by all actors in swedish porn movies.
Must be food time, because the weather has just got turbulent. Oh yes here it is. (Footnote: it is my experience that airline food is always served just as the flight gets a bit rough. Whether this is a ploy to take our minds off of the weather or just Sod's law of aviation meals I'm not sure.)
Hmm, tasteless plastic, my favorite. No actually, the 'meat' did have a vaguely meat-like taste. And the dessert had been overdosed on flavouring enhancer in a bid to wash the tastelessness of the preceding courses from our mouths. I'm still hungry though.
I ought to take a malaria tablet, but they're supposed to be taken after meals, and I'm not sure if what I just ate constitutes a meal. Anyway they're in my bag which is in a locker over the aisle, and probably covered in "'Craphair' posing mousse." I've got 3/4 of an hour in Helsinki to kill yet, it'll give me something to do then.
I've got two lots of malaria tablets. One lot has to be taken twice a week, the other twice a day. I haven't started the latter ones yet, but I had one of the first ones last night and they are fowl. (They taste like chicken scrotums.) You're supposed to start both at least 24 hours before you go to the 'malarious area' and continue them for four weeks after you leave. It's probably better to get malaria. It's something that always impresses grandchildren and implies you are adventurous and widely travelled. Even though the reality is you don't take proper precautions. Which is, after all, the only way I'm gonna get grandchildren with my views on kids and marriage.
Waiting for the queue for the plane to subside. Nine hours fifty minutes the next leg takes. Blimey, that's ages. Still, I got an aisle seat (you can tell by the seat letter) so I can stretch my legs and trip up the odd stewardess / kid running to the toilet.
On the way I was sandwiched between two identical fins. I couldn't stand that for ten hours. The mousse damage has mostly dried. I bet my batteries have discharged and I can't use my walkman for two weeks. God, I'll have to be sociable for all that time.
Or at least it will be once all these foreigners get themselves sat down and we can start moving. Looks like we may get a couple of films, which means I get the chance to put on my Barry Norman hat. It's three feet high, four feet wide and blocks the view of every one behind me.
The three films that would set me up nicely are "Airport'72 (Flares in the air)," "Airplane" and that McCarthy Era one where the Chinese are tunneling under New York and the Marines are sent down to stop (i.e. shoot) them. Only too late they realise they were subway construction workers.
Any second now we are going to get the safety rigmarole. And here it is... On video this time.
Oh bugger forgot to take the malaria tablets. I'm gonna die.
I know it. But I still can't be bothered to get 'em out of my bag.
On the screen are details of our flight. We're sitting on the runway (at a speed of 0 km/h) at an altitude that varies from 49-51 M (165-167 feet) which shows how accurate the equipment really is. It's 12:15 am in Beijing now, which is 3924 miles (or seven hours 32 minutes) away.
The two smug fins on the video screen have done the rigmarole... it's time to take off.
Just been fed... Oriental-style plastic. And I'm even more hungry now. Still the bottle of wine served with it will help me sleep. Pity it only contains 2 small-glasses worth . Mind you, considering I land at about 8:00 am on Monday morning and am expected to at least attempt to work that day, it's probably a good job it isn't a full-sized bottle.
And if the wine don't help me sleep, maybe the film will. "A River Runs Through It." Then again maybe it's more interesting and less fakely enigmatic than it's title suggests.
The food finished with a taste-removed pear-half covered in chocolate-style chocolate flavouring, garnished with pseudo-nuts. After that was REAL crackers and a brie-style cheese substitute. Better than the usual half-bite sized wafers accompanied by rubber 'cheddar.'
There was even an after dinner mint. Served in the same foil-and-plastic-bubble packaging that tablets come in, so it looked just like an indigestion tablet, and only attempted to explain itself in English. This totally foxed the german couple next to me, who incidentally got me off to a good start by asking if I was German or Finnish. They never ate their mint in the end - not that they missed anything.
Still, the coffee is the same airlines over. You can actually taste the mud it was grown in. And bugger-all else. God alone knows why I had two cups of it - trying to get my company's money's worth I suspect. I'm awake now. Revitalising stuff this mud.
The plane has 12 'radio' stations. Well 10 half-hour tapes on continuous loop offering a narrow variety of middle-of-the- road styles. From inoffensive shopping-mall muzak to the current dance sounds of five years ago. The other two channels are for the film. The headphones are styled in the mode of the stethoscope from a child's Doctor and Nurses set. In groovy, bright-blue plastic. Comfort and not having the wearer look a complete 'nana were not the prime concerns of the designer. If indeed he considered them at all. Cheapness was foremost in his mind.
I have six hours to convince myself that now is two AM and not the early evening it feels, and indeed is, in England Upon entry to China foreigners are required to hand over three forms. Arrival form, Departure form (maybe this one gets handed in at the end, you never know with the Chinese) and a declaration of one's health.
This last one asks you to tick if you have any of the following symptoms: Fever, rash, cough, sore throat, bleeding, vomiting, diarrhoea, jaundice or lymph-gland swelling. And if you are bringing any of the following into the country: Biological products, Blood products or Old clothes.
I assume the first two mean 'external to the body.' Well anyone who has actually seen my pallid features may argue as to whether my body does contain any blood products. But it's 'Old clothes' that gets me. Do they seriously think the reputation of Chinese laundries is so great that people are bringing their dirty clothes four thousand miles to get them cleaned? Or maybe by 'old' they mean 'unfashionable' or 'out of style?' Oh god, I hope they don't search through my suit case and find that green anorak. I've wrapped it in drugs so that no one spots it and sniffer dogs can't pick up it's scent. But still, it's a worry.
This bloody steffoskope is hurting my ears untold.
Flying over Siberia at the moment. Or is it Yorkshire? The film is starting, and I can't convince myself it's three in the morning. The best I can do is 9 pm.
A real babe of a gorgeous blonde is about to ask me what I want to drink. Pity it's her job.
The film is uninterest-inspiring rather than boring. What I need is a book that'll bore me into a coma. Hang on, what's this in the pocket? "John and Norma's book of Lists." Foreword by Jason Donovan. Hmm "page one... Our top 50 wallpaper colours."
This should do the trick. "Beige. Light Beige. Dark Beige. Grey with a hint of Beige..."
You know a film is exciting when it features fishing scenes. Fishing is spending an inordinate amount of time and money
outwitting creatures that can't even remember one side of the river from the other.
The film is American. I can't imagine Americans going in for fishing as we know it. The American version would involve dropping grenades into the water and scooping the dead fish from the surface.
I've just discovered that the headphones really ARE stethoscopes. They contain NO wires, but are hollow plastic tubes. The sound is transmitted through the air in them. Squeeze one of the tubes and you loose the sound in that ear. Presumably, if I take the headphones out of the 'socket' and put my ear to it I will hear the sound just as well. Sophisticated is a word that springs to my sarcastic mind.
This leads me to suspect that the dials which select volume and channel do no more than restrict the airways, and select different ones, respectively. Mind you it's less likely to go wrong than the latest computer-controlled, digital, CD-quality system, so I shouldn't knock it. Especially as knocking it causes the noise to reverberate through the tubes and sound like thunderclaps in my eardrums.
It's about an hour after sunrise. The darkness hours number two. Beijing is two and a half hours away. I can't sleep. I feel a bit tired but I won't be able to get comfy enough to sleep.
Neither the film with it's slow-motion fishing scenes (I kid you not), nor Norma Major's top 3000 knitting patterns have inspired me to sleepiness.
I am however managing to convince myself I've been up all night. It's not been easy. I wouldn't normally spend all night in the same chair (especially if it's as uncomfortable as this one) watching an overly-booky film.
Oh good 'breakfast,' I wonder what artificial treats are in store for us now. Whatever they are, they're gonna set the day up really nicely for me, I'm sure.
Occurding to the map on the screen, we are currently dotting the 'i' in Gobi; not too far from Beijing.
'Breakfast' was a warm roll and a cold croisant. The choice of spreads was between an albatross (The finnish equivalent of Dairilea, before you ask) and Black Cherry Jam. This was served with almost-real orange juice and mud.
There was also one of those 'sugar-free after-dinner(?) mints' with the snappy brand name of Xylitol, just to make it sound even more like an indegestion tablet. And the good news is that there is about four-times as much packaging as there is product. Don't it make you glad to be human. Having 'dined,' I cleaned my hands on a piece of packaged toilet-paper soaked in lemon-scented water. Or a 'Refreshing Towelette' as they're known, just to stop you from thinking they're just a piece of packaged toilet-paper soaked in lemon-scented water. That's why marketting people are payed so much.
I have not been too successful on the convincing myself it's early morning front. My mind and body are confused and refuse to think it is any time in particular. I'm in a kind of temporal Twighlight Zone. Maybe the pretty stewardess will reveal herself to be the anti-Me. The Me that could have been, but never was. Or maybe I'm getting tired and writing gibberish. Mr MacHenry, tree-stroker extraordinare, grabbed at his wordlemooser and clasped open his spangle-cornflaker in a desperate attempt at fro#ungulating his koolie for breakfast-tea-lunch-pajamas-fronds.
Belsize.
Yep gibberish.
Only half an hour to go. I'm getting exited now. It's funny, it hasn't happened before (i.e. getting excited about coming here - I have been excited before, thank you very much). But it's a very nervous kind of excitement. Ooh, Mutha!
To be continued...
(c) 1993 Pete More