Thursday 19 December 2013

Back in the UUUK

Travelling back from the south of France today was an interesting experience.

Marseille airport was uninspiring.  I was looking forward to a hot drink and a quiet sit down, but found myself in what felt like a concrete bunker, with some vending machines.  Oh well, life is like that sometimes.

I queued up, and my suitcase, which I had decided was under 20kg based on the fact I could lift it (and I know I have trouble over 20kg from sacks of coal).  Well, I don't know if I've got stronger while I've been away, but my bag was a traumatic 27kg when it landed on the scales.  The lady with lots of pancake make up and an over-orange outfit said it was going to cost me 12 euros per kg over 20.  I nearly fainted.  I didn't want to have to queue again or sort through my belongings in the concrete bunker in front of everyone, so decided to pay.  She offered to let me off 3kg, so I went to another desk to queue up to sort it out.  The overly made up person in blue spent ages with my card, then asked me if I knew what 'code 4' was.  'No' I replied, a bit grumpy.  It turned out that code 4 meant that Easyjet owed me 4 euros.  This happy state of affairs meant THEY COULDN'T TAKE ANY FURTHER PAYMENT FROM ME.  So I had a 'get out of jail free' pass for my suitcase.  Hooray.

As it was a short flight, I hadn't bothered to book a seat, so was a bit dismayed to find I was in the centre seat in the centre of the plane.  There was a woman with a bad cough on my left, and a strange, panic stricken looking man on my right, who was reading a book about the Columbine school massacre.  He looked anxious, fidgeted a lot and tried to keep his very large rucksack on his lap.  His complexion went a bit waxy and grey, and I was worried he might have been getting some ideas from his book.

The seats on Easyjet seem even smaller than I remember them (unless that is the French bread and pastries talking), and I battled a bit with keeping any claustrophobia at bay.  After a while, me and the man got chatty, and it turned out he was wearing a bright yellow, plastic watch.  I decided mass murderers probably don't wear that sort of wrist furniture.  They would have a camouflage patterned Swatch (if they do those).  

I perused the 'Bistro' menu (although the ambience was rather far removed from the bistros I had been in recently), and chose a sandwich.  The stewards spent an age getting the trolley into the middle of the plane, and as the woman in front of me asked for a sandwich, I was dismayed to hear the steward say they had run out.

Hmph.

There was also a bit of chaos as the trolley approaching from the rear of the train met the trolley approaching from the front just at our row.  

Apart from that it was a rather nice flight.  There were some amazing cloudscapes, which I had to peer past the coughing woman to see.  She didn't look out of the window, she was busy reading celebrity cellulite magazines, which I thought was a shame.  One cloud formation looked just like a breaking roller, and I half expected to see some surfing dudes come crashing past at any minute.

I wondered what Cezanne or Turner would have made of the view, it's a shame they couldn't get the Easyjet experience to give them some inspiration, although it would be sad if their paintings ended up with too much bright orange.

'What's the pointilism of orange?'

3 comments:

Emily Maia said...

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Emily Maia said...

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Emily Maia said...

www.truquemakeupblog.blogspot.com