Travelling Hopefully

As one wanders through the departure lounge of Sydney airport the first thing that hits you is a gust of perfume.  It’s also the second, third and fourth thing that hits you.  Apparently the staff in the duty free perfume shops have given up on scent soaked pieces of cardboard and have simply rigged perfume dispensers up to the sprinkler system.  Which doesn’t stop them accosting you with scent laden slivers of card as well.

Having staggered through this olfactory assault and emerged more scent than alive I arrived at the departure gate just in time to board my flight.  This skillful bit of timing was the result of me and Sydney airport working together.  I played my part by realising I had forgotten something vital when I was in the cab on the way to the airport and having to go back and get it.  Sydney airport came to the party by scheduling renovations that slowed movement through the departure gate to a crawl.  The result of this convergence of idiocies was that I didn’t have to wait a second at the terminal.  In fact they seemed very pleased to see me.

By the way it is definitely time they stopped renovating Sydney airport.  No matter what they do it always winds up the same gloomy, ill lit barn it’s always been.  There comes a time when you have to acknowledge that plastic surgery isn’t working anymore and you just have to accept that this is what you’re going to look like.  Nothing further will be an improvement and it will just signal your increasing desperation to the world.  From now on Sydney airport should limit its renovations to keeping the possums out of the roof and, of course, off the runway.

Now my aerial steed is thundering through the stratosphere leaving a trail of greenhouse gases in its wake; the ultimate horseman of the Apocalypse.  The next time you hear from me I’ll be in Bangkok, or a supporting role in Aircrash Investigation.