I have to say …not much !!! except that they have each seemed to feature in my life on a regular basis over this past year.
So following a special request, and before ‘the-year-of-the-blog’ draws to a close, I’m happy to say that this piece of observational trivia touches on all of the above.
BUT… first I must again comment that I’ve lost a day …24hours of my life vanished. Never to be seen again. So if you notice that we skipped from 28th Dec to 30th Dec …blame the International Dateline (and the fact that Australia is so far away from the rest of the world).
Now, as I have mentioned earlier…plane travel is a great time for people watching. I mean what else are you going to do while strapped in that seat? (other than eat ‘less-than-great-food’, sleep… and watch movies). The people surrounding you can be a great source of amusement and entertainment …or a complete pain in the bum….But whichever way they go, they provides great fodder for the astute observer. Take for example or my neighbour who, despite establishing very early in the journey that I had no voice, so conversation was impossible ….insisted on asking me endless questions (prefaced with …‘Oh I know it’s hard for you to answer…BUT … what can you tell me about ….insert X,Y,Z …..for the next 15 hours)
Or, consider the super-sized gent squeezed between the armrests and looking extraordinarily uncomfortable (not to mention his next door neighbour) …or the four legged pooch who lays still @ his owners feet all the way from New York to LA ( I wonder what party drugs HE was on?)….the gorgeous young woman who ‘slipped into something more comfortable’ and travelled most of 15 hour leg of the journey in her skimpy PJ’s …the list is endless and the entertainment value priceless.
Then there is the morning ‘freshen-up’ ….Daylight arrives, people rouse from their drug induced slumber and begin to queue for the loo. There they are, all waiting to brush the fungus from their gaping mouths and prepare for ‘de-planing’ (yep that’s a word according to our flight steward), so the time taken in the super cosy cubicle is longer than any other visit throughout the flight… but that’s OK because we all want to look our best when we emerge from the airport, back on home soil… don’t we?
However, when my turn comes…to my shock and horror, I enter this slightly-warmer-than-is-comfortable space, to discover the residue of many travellers. Hand towels and loo paper strewn, water splashed all over the cupboard top and worst of all, a sink full of toothpaste spittle. Eeek !! True to my style, I can’t bear to leave it how I find it (after all…god forbid… the next person in the queue might think I’M responsible …) …so I set about the ‘housework’ so that I can leave with my head held high.
That job done, it’s time to clean myself up. One look in the mirror tells me that 27hrs of travel was not the best for putting ‘the best face forward’ so a full re-do was desperately needed. BUT alas, when I get to the ….(you guessed it….) eyebrows, I had no colouring-in pencil or brush for a touch up. Arrrgggh !!!
Always one to improvise, I reached for my mascara, figuring that a hint of that would do the job …That was, UNTIL… we hit some turbulence and my ‘hint’ became a solid swipe, and the colour turned out to blue-black rather than brown !!! …ooops, I suddenly look like ‘a horror movie right there on the TV’.
So, after a few minutes of scrubbing, I emerged sporting my black eyes (not QUITE what I had in mind to be ready to greet the world) … BUT… the housework was done ….and appearances where kept up …in part at least!!
. THIS was the way our Mums and our Mums’ Mums did it, back in the ‘olden days’ (maybe not the toilet bowl bit, ’cause that was usually out the back). But that was their life, often with hair in rollers and a hairnet, down on their knees scrubbing floors til they were clean enough to eat off….at LEAST once each week…. every week.
Wonder Years 