Here I sit, computer on my knee, in an empty lounge, waiting for the last leg of my journey, a Virgin Blue flight to Hobart. To my satisfaction I managed to send a few email messages though it took 4 tries to gain access to the airport service. You’d think transcribing credit card details would be straightforward…
I haven’t changed my watch yet but I’m incapable of calculating the number of hours that have passed since I left the house—somehow it’s two days later, Sept. 10, here, and I’m completely confused. Flying west in Canada you fly backwards in time as it gets earlier, but I’ve arrived to find myself flung ahead into the future—Sept. 9 bypassed altogether.
Many hours on planes and in airports, but only a few irritations. The public showers listed on the Melbourne (or Melbun, as they say here) website appear no longer to exist, likely swallowed by an airport renovation (is there a worldwide move to renovate airports?) according to the Virgin Blue service desk. I made do with washing my face and neck and partly changing clothes in a washroom. The zipper on my computer bag will no longer close. I took a brief look in a luggage shop here and found a lovely one for $AUS 587… My new tote-on-wheels handle jams and has to be jimmied shut. At least my suitcase arrived.
The best part of the flight was earlier today, when I woke finally and settled into reading Anne Michaels’s The Winter Vault. I’ve been completely sunk into it, uncertain much of the time where I was—Egypt, eastern Ontario, in a darkened plane cabin en route to Tasmania, or somewhere else altogether.
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