I ended my last post by saying that I might be back in the UK sooner than I expected. Well, that's exactly what's come to pass - and explains why I'm sitting in the garden of my dad's house in Southampton writing this post!
Unsurprisingly last week was a bit manic. Dad confirmed on Tuesday that granddad Bill's funeral will be on Friday 18th July, and I made up my mind on Wednesday that I should return. My flights were paid for by Thursday morning and I left Sydney on Saturday morning.
After discovering that the terms of my secondment to Sydney didn't include for any specific entitlement to flights home, even for a family funeral, I had to hunt around for flights myself. Prices were moderately horrifying, and so I asked Arup's travel agent to have a go too. They came up with a slightly odd routing via Tokyo with JAL that saved me $600 against the next best fare I could find. After I had paid up, I received some verbal support from my superiors in Sydney - beyond them granting me permission to take the necessary time off - along the lines of them paying for my trip (especially as they didn't have to pay for me to get out to Sydney in the first place). So here's hoping that by the time my credit card bill is due for payment, that little matter is resolved.
So this explains why, after quite a scenic flight out over the central Queensland coast (photo above) and the great barrier reef, followed by passing over Papua new guinea and Guam, I found myself at JAL's expense (due to the next flight to London being at noon the next day) at one of their hotels at Narita Airport - not really in Tokyo - in fact 66km from it. I thought half-heartedly about attempting to get into the city but then got talking to a fellow transit passenger - an Irish girl also living in Sydney - who was happy enough to have someone to talk to over dinner. As was I. Dinner was fun - the hotel had a garden fitted out with round picnic tables with Korean-style gas barbecues installed at their centre. The deal was DIY BBQ Japanese style, with all-you-can drink booze thrown in. I think we westerners handled this latter aspect a little better than some of the Japanese travelers - more than one of whom had to be carried up to their rooms at the end of the night!
The beer dispensing machines were so typically Japanese, in that they were ingenious - you retrieved a chilled glass from the fridge, placed it under the nozzle, and pressed the button next to a cartoon drawing of a foaming jug of ale. Then - this is the clever bit - the machine tilted the glass by about 45 degrees, so dispensing the beer down the side of the glass. As the glass filled, it slowly tilted back to the upright position, creating just the right amount of head on the beer. What a fantastic country Japan is.
The next day I continued on to London, twelve and a half hours from Tokyo (which in itself was nine and a half hours from Sydney). I sat next to a talkative Aussie girl called Kylie (really!) who was on her first big trip out of Australasia. I was impressed that she managed to point out Wembley Stadium as the plane banked over London, lining up for the landing strip at Heathrow. The view of the city was spectacular, and it was then that I was reminded that I'd been treated to the equivalent view of Sydney just a week or so before, the last time I'd flown up to Brisbane (didn't get such a great view leaving Sydney on this trip). Suddenly it felt very odd to be back, landing at a city that I know extremely well, when a week earlier I'd had no intention of returning until late November. Barely an hour and a half later, thanks to my brother's driving, I was at my dad's place in Southampton.
So having decided to come back for the funeral, it seemed sensible to take care of some other family business while here... obviously Hannah is one person I need to see - we've not seen each other since early May and a lot has happened since then! I'm also planning to get down to Devon next week to see my Mum, who is getting re-married in August, and even went to the trouble of sending me a wedding invite in Sydney. If I can't make it to the wedding - I can't really hang around in the UK for that long if I'm supposed to be working in Sydney - then the least I can do is go visit her!
Anyway I called this post 'a temporary hiatus' as that is exactly what being back in the UK feels like... it's like some kind of out-of-body-experience! I definitely wouldn't want my round-the-world trip to end as suddenly as this... so it's a good thing I bought a new ticket for this trip and left my flights from Oz-India and India-UK unaffected. And there would be the small matter of all the stuff I've left behind in Sydney...!
Robin
No comments:
Post a Comment