The One about the Airport

Something about a suitcase I think ...........

Having torn a page out of my passport in my cups to give a stranger my phone number, and thus rendering it null and void, and a moot point simultaneously, it came as a complete surprise that I could not actually use it when needed. The Skin & Blister had booked herself, the Quiet Leitrim Man and the child into a villa in Southern Spain and I was all over it like shite on a blanket. I let them get a good run at it by allowing them 3 days grace before I rocked up figuring they would have sussed out what the Jackanory was by then and allow me to get in like Flynn as soon as I stepped off the plane into a hot smell of Marlboro.  

- “What do you mean you have no passport??” the Skin & Blister asks with one eyebrow up in her hair.

I drew a veil over the more outrageous truth and she informs that I may take myself to the city and join a throng of desperate hopeless people in a crush with their faces pressed up against the glass to get an emergency one.

I thought she was joking.

We set out with high hopes and sandwiches.

And arrived at the Passport Office at Sparrowfart O clock where I took a number while she grabbed seats in the back of the room. I defy you to find a sadder room filled with more pleading and consternation in the entire Island. The baleful eye of the inmates on the clicking counter, the sighing and coughing, the fag breaks with people watching your seat in a spirit of camaraderie similar to the blitz, and I won’t say we were a very very long time, but one infant was wheeled inside in a pram and came out walking.  My number was 374.

 I gazed at it and the counter for hours and then finally went outside to smoke with the other wretches.

I was holding court at the smoking bin which was smoudering from hot doggers when the Skin & Blister came out.

-  It’s you, c’mon, says she.

And when I am finally at the counter pat my pockets and realise I have thrown the ticket into the bin which is now on fire.

It was that last cigarette that did it 

- “Get OUT of the way” I screech plunging my hand into the coffee cups, banana skins, flames and tinfoil wrappers of egg salad and extricate the ticket in the absolute nick.

The woman with the moon face and the high haircut is having none of my goster.

“It can’t be done today” says she placidly and waits for my response.

Like Withnail I feel my bottom lip tremble and utter the immortal line –

 - “I work on a ship you know” -

 ............................. if you help me get on that plane, I’ll let you onto a ship and give you a cabin and a tour and a fried breakfast and meet the captain and” ............

 (knowing in my heart of hearts I could in fact do ALL of the above if I sweet talked a few pursers and chefs) until she relents with a temporary one and I remove my tear stained face from the glass screen.

Oh go on then, give them a Deluxe and a Full Irish 

In the airport which I believe is a complete hoax and that there is another situated in a secret part of the city that only RALE Dubs know about, I marvel at the fact that people seem to dress for flying as if there will be no else there. I queued at the wrong desk to check in and so almost rocked up on an Aer Arann flight to the Arran Islands with a Tankini, a bottle of factor 50 and a GHD. In the Ryan Air plane I have a spare seat beside me and am delirious until a Canadian man as big as a Bishop tentatively lowers his massive bulk beside me and gently places his damp stomach, arm and thigh on mine and buckles the pair of us in.

“Your honour, he didn’t  even pay for 2 seats, he just used them”

The cheek of him to flirt with me I think watching as he dabs his giant sweating head with what appears to be a tablecloth.

In my delight to be off the plane and away from him I ran down the arrivals ramp with the wrong suitcase which I had seized from a carousel and run out the revolving doors into a wall of Spanish heat with.

I only learned about a ribbon later  

The Geordie Cabbie was so stoned we drove at 20km on the motorway for over an hour while incensed Boy Racers blasting Europop overtook us flipping the bird.  He also had the dry mouth and his lips were sticking to his teeth with the drought. I was not to know till later that he could drink Lough Erne dry until his wife threw him out one night and he slept on the plastic chairs outside on my balcony.

The Quiet Leitrim Man had to sit down on the bed to get a good run at the laugh when I realised that my keys were not opening the case. He went up on a high note, and then breathlessly rocked to and fro under a ceiling fan that looked like it might remove itself from the ceiling and have someones eye out. He had already removed his top in a concession to the endless heat and I was distraught simultaneously  about the case and trying not to look at his nipples. The Skin & Blister left me a list of instructions as long as a Stalagmite of do’s and don’ts for when they left, assuming rightly that I was careless and flittery which I proved by doing 3 of the banned things before they had driven away around the corner.

In a moment of madness I invited a woman with a red coat to come and spend a week with me in the villa so the Geordie Cabbie and I were back at the airport once again to collect her. He was monosyllabic at this stage and I think may have dozed off for a number of minutes on a good straight stretch of the road.

The woman with the red coat had bought this big padded, pocketed, fleece lined, Goretex jacket that you would only wear half way up Croagh Patrick in a thunderstorm. Bear Grylls could probably pitch a camp in it, using the giant pockets to catch slugs tears to make tay. She brought it everywhere, whether working or dining, and rolled it up or carried it to pubs and bars, line dancing and wakes.

So I should not have been at all surprised to see her walking off the plane wearing it in the 40 degree heat.

But God help me, I was.

MDM

Scourged by Michelle Dooley Mahon is available in store, online and directly from the author at 

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