Wednesday, October 04, 2006

My Week, by Pav

Wednesday 27/9, 9 pm
Give up in despair on any hope at all of finishing 1300-word book review whose deadline was yesterday before I catch plane in morning -- preparing for Sydney meeting has been several days' work. Check off packing list, a pointless exercise as before I go to bed the following night I will already have longed for some dental floss, a pair of nail scissors and my hairbrush, none of which I've packed, but I don't know that yet.

Wednesday 11 pm
Ring taxi company, get into bingle with bitch on other end re booking cabs at peak hour after she asks 'What time does your plane leave?' which always gets my back up, having had several near-missed flights in the past when I've been stupid enough to tell them. ('Well, we can't guarantee it'll be there.' 'But that's why I'm calling tonight, to make sure.' 'It wouldn't matter if you called last week, we can't guarantee you a cab at that time of day.' Silly me, wanting to go somewhere at 7.50 am.)

Thursday 28/9, 8.30 am
Get double frisked at airport security -- 'It's random, just random checks,' the poor woman whose job this is keeps telling me. Clearly, many have freaked.

Thursday, 1.30 pm
Work meeting at Sydney U begins.

Thursday, 6 pm
Meeting repairs en masse to restaurant and continues, albeit in more relaxed vein, till 9. Then consider finding my way to The Clock and grogblog happening thereat, but am too tired to cope with any of the looks I usually get when people who for some reason were expecting me to be a 25-year-old, 175 cm, 50-kilo blonde find out the ludicrous truth, which is that those numbers all go in a different order. Not strong enough for one of those encounters tonight. Repair to hotel to sleep the sleep of the knackered.

Friday, 29/9, 9.30 am
Meeting resumes.

Friday, 5.30 pm
Meeting concludes.

Do the Catch a Plane Home from Sydney on a Friday Night thing, the one where if you book the sensible flight you will almost certainly be delayed and miss it, and if you cautiously book the last plane home for the night then you will have no delays and a smooth run to the airport, where you will then mooch for two and a half hours.

Tonight it's the latter, which, on the whole, I prefer. Qantas in Sydney now has no check-in facilities between the electronic DIY things that look like post-boxes and the Help desks for morons, of which there are only two and at both of which there is a very long queue. Am doing fine with postbox despite the fact that it has no instructions for people who have booked through a travel agency (which I was obliged to do, it being a university-funded trip) when staff member bustles up to "help". While he is "helping", machine times out, and will thenceforth give me nothing but a bit of paper saying Get in the Help Queue.

The Help Queue I am in is not moving. Decide to have another go at the postbox, from scratch, without "help". Nope. I go to the back of the queue I was in.

At the Help desk, there is a big to-do about my Hair Product and an altercation about my seat allocation.

Make a mental note never ever to fly with Qantas again ever, at all. Realise I have made this mental note before.

Flight is delayed -- 'We have a slight discrepancy in passenger numbers.' Assume this means they have routinely overbooked and that, to their horror, everyone has turned up. (Does anyone reading this know how that works?) More of a problem than usual, given it's the last Sydney-Adelaide flight for the night -- no putting people on a later flight. Underline mental note and draw a flowery border around it.

Friday, 10.40 pm
Flight touches down in Adelaide.

Saturday, 30/9, 8.30 am
Get out of bed by force of will and proceed to girly up for art prize presentation and exhibition opening at the Hahndorf Academy in the Hills. This turns out to be fab -- perfect weather, really good Art, lovely Hills lunch with best mate. Drive home. Have very long nap.

Sunday, 1/10
Read 300-page novel.

Monday, 2/10, 8 am
Write and file 1300-word review (see Wednesday, above).

Monday, 7 pm
Drive into city to read at one of poet Ken Bolton's regular Monday night 'writers reading' type gigs. Get home 10 pm, in time to be thrilled that the telecast of the Slowdown (old farts footy match, always hilarious) has meant that Criminal Minds has only just started so there's a whole hour of watching Mandy Patinkin.

Tuesday, 3/10, 8.30 am
Write and file 650-word review of the 300-page novel I read on Sunday.

Wednesday, 4/10, 8.30 am
Water garden in desperate bid to save glorious sweet-pea harvest from today's weather, 'hot and windy'. Consider erecting screens. Settle for tying up plants more securely, ditto tomato.

Wednesday, 9 am
Front up to page 1 of 350-page book of which 850-word review must be filed by tomorrow. Look past that to 8-10 min radio review/overview (must all be written down) of the wonderful Kate Atkinson, she of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, whose work I have only just discovered, deadline October 9.

Wednesday, 9.05 am
Cannot bear to neglect blog any longer, but brain refuses to produce any sensible remarks on global crimes, national lunacies or local sillinesses. Meditate on past week instead. Feel better, marginally.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you really 25cm tall?

No wonder the frisking was so discombobulating.

It's rather weird that the most [strike]anal[/strike] rigorous friskers in the country's airports all work in regional backwaters [sorry, Adelaide, but your Qantas Club lounge screams "I AM A BACKWATER! KILL ME NOW!"].

I had the frisking of my life once at Mackay Airport. AND the bastard never returned my calls.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Heh.

Heheh. Heheheheheh. Was that the old Adelaide airport or the new one?

Mindy said...

Fyodor you steal all the best lines.

Hope your sweet peas survived the heat, PC. I saw on the weather report that it's warm in Adelaide again today. Is that unseasonable?

Mindy said...

Actually the whole frisking thing has just reminded me of travelling with Charlie when he was about 10 months old. The guy doing the b*mb check thingy was counting people through the gate and we were next up. Charlie, although in my arms, was the designated number to be checked. So a very bemused little boy got swiped all over by that wand thingy while his incredulous mother looked on. I'm not sure if there have ever been any 10 month old b*mb makers, but with security like that they are sure to catch them if there are.

Ampersand Duck said...

I love the thought that while I was lolling in the park for my birthday you were lolling (I presume) and reading a WHOLE book. That's my idea of a perfect day. Sorry about the rest of it.

And I'm not sure what my mental picture of you is but it ain't blonde and perky. More whiskered and clawed (in a good way).

Anonymous said...

If you get bumped off an overbooked flight and do enough of the right kind of restrained but bitter sooking at the right moment you can profit quite nicely on the deal. It's only worth the bother if it's not too inconvenient to wait for the next flight to wherever it is.

redcap said...

I feel your pain, Pav Cat. I'm supposed to be writing a review on a true crime book at the moment, but I keep going to sleep every time I pick up the book.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Also, Fyodor, Adders hardly qualifies in the same backwater league as Mackay. I mean, really.

Mindy, the sweet peas seem okay, even though the temperature got up to 33 here today. We had fire bans, the earliest on record, I believe.

&D -- whiskered & clawed, as you surmise.

Liam, what a nice comment. Thank you for the kind words therein.

Laura, tx for the tip -- my sooking is excellent, thanks to years of practice.

Redcap, that is one impressive gravatar. Burne-Jones? Waterhouse?

Ampersand Duck said...

What a great link! Who was it that talked about prominent women needing to have their hands under their chins or near their faces when having a media photo taken? I prefer your more active approach.