Jet Setter

I dragged my extremely tired self out of bed at 4.30 am, a time I was only dimly aware existed, at least from that direction. I dragged my even more tired self back into it about midnight. The intervening period was spent being implausibly businesslike in suit, shirt, tie, shiny shoes and sometimes even a smart overcoat. Freaky. I always feel like a fucking pantomime dame in that getup. I tried to take a picture of it before I left, just to prove it happened, but the camera battery gave out while it was trying to save the image to the card. Tsk.

In the business class lounge (business class, ffs! Though not as a matter of policy, alas -- we'd have been sent economy, but the only economy tickets left were actually more expensive than the restricted business ones we got. Go figure.) -- a depressing non-place in which every single person was wearing a suit and tie and looked like a ghost -- I vented as much early morning negativity as I could, in preparation for being onstage for the rest of the day. I'm not sure the elderly businessman we were sharing a table with appreciated it, but I had a good time. Then we did our best to miss the plane by being at the wrong subsection of our departure gate. Who'd have guessed there'd be two flights departing from gate 27 at the same time?

By the time the plane took off I'd been up for the best part of three hours and it was still dark. That's just unreasonable. On the plus side, I got to blearily witness parts of a really gorgeous sunrise from above the dense cloud layer. Pretty :)

Then, the meeting. I acquitted myself a lot better than I expected, and the results of the meeting were a lot better than I expected, and in fact the whole bloody day was... well, you know. Sometimes, I can almost believe I'm reasonably competent. I might even be of some value to my employers, though if they realise it they don't let on.

After the meeting finished in the late afternoon we were left, thanks to our flight schedule, with quite a few hours to kill in downtown Hannover, and those were mostly spent wandering around the Christmas market (when we eventually located it), drinking glühwein, eating bratwurst and bitching. My companion exercised his gift of the gab (which, being both a salesman and Irish, he is contractually required to have) and my own tongue was loosened by alcohol, so it all got rather lively and also very festive.

(Apropos nothing, we were both impressed by the glühwein mug system: all of the varied food stalls serving the drink use identical mugs, on which one pays a deposit of €1; the mug can then be returned to any of the other stalls to reclaim the deposit, or indeed refilled. One might freely wander the length of the market sipping the warming liquid all the while. Neat. Of course, it took us some time to discern the details of this system, by which time we were all glühweined out, but still, it's a perfect example of the damnable efficiency for which those Germans are renowned.)

And then, eventually, home.

The luggage racks on the Heathrow Express look an awful lot like bunk beds; the temptation to curl up on one and catch a few minutes snooze was almost irresistible. But resist I did, and eventually staggered home, a total zombie. Seldom have I been as happy to be back as at that moment. I considered taking an "after" picture, but flinging off the suffocating drag took priority. Maybe next time.

And then it was -- is -- back to life.

I was stressed about this trip beforehand, as if it was something. But it wasn't. It was just another day at the office. A fact I would do well to remember.

Just another day at the office.
Posted by matt at December 10, 2004 12:49 AM