OR, I SWORE I’D NEVER DO IT AGAIN.
Dumb stupid me.
The classic faux pas that a novice would do, not a veteran traveller like me. I thought that I would treat myself to just the one as I was bored on my last day. I’d been to the museum in the morning and planned to finish my blog after. It was then the WiFi started playing up and so did I. Not having a book is another schoolgirl error and I had finished mine a long time back up in the mountains.
Just the one I thought as I glugged down an icy beer in the last of the days sunshine. Then I trotted off to where I was to meet my cousin and as he was late another frothy concoction was quaffed. At the restaurant of course I had to join him for one, two then three over dinner. A nightcap is mandatory by then. I had no water in my room and I slept badly needing a lot of wees in the night. Truly stupid of me knowing I had an early flight. Lack of sleep, too many beers and also rising hysteria about returning to ghastly England.
Apart from getting lost on the way to the airport everything else seemed to go smoothly despite my weariness, headache and nausea until my phone pinged at the gate. Our plane is bust they are getting us a fresh one and here the agony begins. You know when they say just over and hour it’s bollacks, it’s going to be a ghastly amount of pissing about and suffering, not just for me with my hangover, but all the women who’ve just had beauty surgery in İzmir. I say beauty in a very general way as one doubts the stapling of stomachs and filing down of teeth for veneers could ever be for beautification in any way shape or form. The trout pouts and enlarged breasts, hips and bums are macabre to say the least and flying straight after must endanger you. From what I overheard in a nosy way was that they all were already feeling a little poorly before this delay.
However I digress just to shift a little blame from my hangover from hell to these poor misguided women. I now will really suffer if I have to hang around for hours.
I’ve done this before quite a few times. I puked freshly squeezed orange juice in nearly every toilet in Cairo airport on the way to my gate, cursing the wild vodka party the previous night. The horror of arriving at Alexandria airport and trying to get a cab that wasn’t going to take advantage of my dishevelled glassy eyed appearance was a reminder of my folly. After arriving at my hotel I was horrified to see I had a room on the twentieth floor or some such vertiginous height, with a very low balcony and I behaved just like Mel in his film ‘High Anxiety ‘. It was such a shame because it looked over our beach and the bay of Alexandria where the Pharos Lighthouse used to stand. The rest of the day was a write off with me lying whimpering on my bed. So much for travelling hungover, it’s always a nightmare.
THE JOURNEY HOME TO BLIGHTY. A JOURNAL.
“Today I’ll indulge in the hair of the dog, then hopefully sleep, I’m lucky enough to have got a window seat. This tactic does seem to work as long as you don’t get greedy. I’ve done that a couple of times and it’s not a good look, turning up in a country you’re visiting half cut and grinning foolishly. Clearly if you went too far with this you could be arrested. I’ll opt for wait and see approach as it seems that our plane is broken and they’re flying in a new one from Istanbul.
Just had terrible sweats in the very overheated extreme far reaching section of the airport. The land where no more gates exist and planes clearly go to die. I have had to stagger down to a section with huge blowing fans that made me feel a lot better. The layers I am wearing for the UK are now tied haphazardly around my person. Things are not going so well. I feel too nauseous to even use the smoking room downstairs, or indeed the pet toilet.
They have changed my gate again and I had to go down the very long vertiginous escalator past what looks like a now very welcoming pet toilet. Will my suffering never end?
We are on the fucking new plane now. It would be very ironic to have an accident after all this. I do have a window seat and I am now trying to ‘rest my eyes’ as my ex would say. Pegasus is always overheated and it would seem that all the coughing snivelling people around me are also suffering. If I get sick from all the bastard people around me there will be hell to pay. I’ve neatly side-stepped vicious colds and food poisoning in the three months in Turkiye. I have stayed very healthy despite the dreadful over-drinking and working like a slave on the land, with a pickaxe amongst other heavy ancient farm tools loaned to me by the fish restaurant. (and such a heavy rake that looked like it belonged in the local museum?)
I’ve slept on and off through flight like most other passengers by the look of it. Have they deliberately deprived us of oxygen as well as pumping up the heat? Have they done this to quell any unruly behaviour by the normally feisty Brits at the end of their hols? I’ve slept against the window and forward onto the seat in front and at one point woke dribbling on the shoulder of my poor neighbour. He didn’t seem to care he also was sleeping on my head. I’m actually feeling too rough to even have a drink. I was concerned that I didn’t have a book or anything downloaded to watch but I needn’t have fretted, I was too zonked to need anything except for a quick loo upheaval I just wallowed in misery.
Off plane and am in an eternal e-passport queue. Why oh why do they bother with this which is supposed to speed the process, but indeed just hinders it. I shouted out from the midst of the winding mass of obedient bodies around me that I wanted to go queue for an actual human being to do my passport. People looked at me like I was mad. I can see the short queues for non fucking e-passports and various chaps from other parts of the world. They are having a much easier time even if they are claiming to be political refugees ffs. This is so not on. This is a joke.
Back home now. The journey was hellish and any vestige of happiness and Zen from my garden in Turkiye was well and truly flushed down the toilet by the vile journey and hideous realisation that I was back in the cesspit which is still known as Soho. A mountain of post awaits me but luckily I left the place spotless so I just have to dust off my water filter (I hope it’s ok after a long time without being used) an remove the bits I very sensibly froze before leaving. These include cooked meals, milk, butter cheddar cheese, Parmisan, bread and a collection of fruits veg, and meat. I can now hibernate and just creep out in the morning for eggs and a bit of bacon. Sunday I can do farmers market but apart from that I shall go into full hibernation in this cold horrible grey weather.
What am I going to do without the mountains and my garden? What am I going to do without the clean mountain air and the natural spring water? I am back in this dystopian nightmare. I am back in the very centre of the hornets nest. I am heading for a physical and mental breakdown. I am on a knifes edge I can feel it. I will not survive here, alone and distressed without my Turkish ‘family’ who have been around me for three months now. I have no support here this is truly a nightmare.”
Top Tip: Do not ever, ever travel with a hangover. It’s foolhardy and possibly dangerous. I try to warn everyone about the things not to do including showing a terrible side of my and my terrible behaviour as a deterrent. Be good old birds only risking getting blathered after having travelled and close to where you are staying. This is preferably at your hotel or the equivalent. Even if you have a lift home don’t risk it. Although I joke about it it’s not cool to put yourself in danger and a possible target for those who would harm you. Stay safe my loves!
AFTER…..
Well I crashed and burned. Everything caught up with me and indeed I’ve had a kind of breakdown. All the problems with the house and garden, dealing with grinding bureaucracy in a foreign country, and a less than sympathetic ex had already ground me down, and then my lovely sis dying while I was away. It was clearly more than I could bear and affected my health . My epilepsy loss of smell and taste also kicked in which added to my misery, and before anyone shouts ‘Covid’ no, it’s since a head injury from a grand mal seizure years ago. In times of extreme stress it kicks in and compounds my misery.
Over one week I’ve holed up in my apartment, too cold but too scared to turn up the thermostat, fretting about the heating bills in a very old age pension way. I managed to stagger to the library and got loads of amazing books and have read voraciously, wrapped up in layers and even wearing my warm hat once I found it amongst my few last clothes I have stored here. My winter wardrobe is non-existent due to excessive flinging out of bobbly sweaters and woolly trousers. Al my long Johns from my Trans Siberian Express trip were deemed to have too much polyester in . No stone was left unturned in the mass binning of any artificial fabrics. I am only left with cotton track suits for my punishment in what is proving to be a nippy winter.
My bright flowery home-made cotton skirts mock me from the wardrobe and my Thai yoga pants are as frail as I am. Everything is very lovely if you’re living in bloody Mexico. Flip flops and evening wear bulge out of every crevice and I’ve actually had to buy some fleece and felt slippers and a buggery bollacky pair of flannelette jimjams. I over-weeded my wardrobe and am left with useless flowers rather than some hearty veg.
I want to go back to being the old bird that I love and trust not this shell of a woman. I’m frightened I’ll never get back to the robust devil may care ruffled but intact vagabond. I want to be me again, this brush with pathetic weakness scares the 100% cotton gusseted knickers off me and I WILL NOT BE THAT WOMAN!
To better times I’ll let you know my next move when I figure out which way the wind is blowing and which climes are beckoning the freedom loving old bird.
Old Bird Travels Solo! 