LJ Idol - Open topic - She didn't take my sock to Australia...
...but it's not for lack of trying! This is a follow up to my entry for the previous free topic, but should stand by itself.
For weeks and weeks, all we'd heard from the beautiful sister about her plans for the gap year were her plans for her leaving party. She felt we were nagging and didn't trust her to make sensible choices about her time away; Mum thought she was refusing to face reality - I think they both had a point.
The party went very well, held in the pub she'd been barmaiding in until the previous week. My 84 year old grandfather, who has never drunk alcohol in his life, crossed the threshold of such a venue for the first time ever in order to say goodbye. There was dancing and singing and cheesy decorations of kangaroos. It was fun. After the friends left, however, the panic started to hit! There was list-making and errands and busy-busy-busy.
As a complete side-line to this, my stepfather is retiring later this year, so he and my mum have been getting quite a lot of jobs done on the house before their income drops; so in the week leading up to the sister's departure, as stress levels are naturally rising all around, there was the added headache of getting the bathroom re-tiled! Joy!
Because my sister and I are made of the same stuff on the inside, in amongst the busy, was also a move I recognised: the listless stare at the to-do list with the mouth slightly agape, having no clue where to begin. Which is how I ended up packing the suitcase. Yes, just the one. That had an extra 9kg of stuff added and snuck in the sides in the couple of days before departure (but more on that later).
Because of the jokes we shared about my odd sock in week 11 of this competition, I thought this was a great moment for touching humour. The very sock I mentioned (or the other one to the pair, I couldn't tell), was secreted, rolled up next to a make-up bag, inside a shoe, bearing the following note with a safety pin:
Uh-oh! A Stowaway!!
I have the other of the pair,
use it if you need to think of me. xx
My paranoia rose a bit every time anyone went near the case, or, indeed, when anyone went near to my room, where I had pinned the spare sock to my noticeboard. There was a sappy card to my sis, for her to read on the plane, and then this that she'd find once she got there. Brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. Yeah, as you can tell, that's not going to last... .
So after a final good-bye meal at the her pub and not enough sleep for anyone, it's The Morning Of, where we make each other substantial breakfasts that none of us will eat. Due to the complicated family set-up we have, of divorced parents who are both re-married, including me means there are five people who want to say goodbye at the airport, plus one departing traveller, plus one (large) suitcase. Stepdad is flying to elsewhere in the country for work the following day so he, at least, will also be staying overnight in London, and therefore needs appropriate baggage. So, no chance of all getting in Dad's car then. Mum, who is a perfectly competent but really nervous driver is absolutely not going to bring our car back from London by herself. So The Wanderer is going in the car with Dad and Stepmum and her suitcase, whilst we will meet them there after taking the train. Fortunately, they leave before we do, so she's not stuck in the house wandering around in tears by herself!
Nothing ever runs smoothly though and there is a last minute battle with time, when her new e-reader decides to lose all the books on it the day before the adventure where she's really going to need them. Stepdad is on the phone with customer services in the USA all morning, and she leaves it in his capable hands when it's time to go, with the promise that if it really really isn't finished by the time we have to go, she can have mine even though I don't have quite as many books. She steals my cable for it though, just to be sure. Or to have something to remember me by - she doesn't know about that sock! But by the time came, it had been sorted half an hour ago. Good old Stepdad.
Five and a half hours later, after no particular hiccups with the journey, our contingent arrives at the airport, whereupon commences The Battle Of The Egos. Remember that extra 9kgs that were added? Now the suitcase is 6-7kgs over the allowable weight and there's already a bit of conflict between Dad & Stepmum, and Sister, over what to leave behind. There is stuff over a fairly large area of the floor, and multiple piles on different chairs, of things to leave behind or to be re-packed. Fortuneately, the airport is very quiet; in fact, quieter by far than I've ever seen an airport, even a pokey one, not a large international one like this. Although unfortunately the same, so the stewardesses kind of stare at us a little.
Stepdad and Dad, in particular are talking over each other and taking different things out of the suitcase to each other. It's kind of always like this when all our parents get together, although they are perfectly pleasant and amenable to each other to their face. Amongst the pile of items on the chair are the shoes in which the secret sock is hidden, because wedge heels are heavy and bulky and even though they were the first specific purchase for this new life lived by the beach, they are also one of the first casualties of the cut; initially, the sock wasn't even noticed at all. When it was found, it was dismissed as one of mine with no idea how it had ended up there, presumably by mistake. She doesn't recollect the joke right then, nor has it been unrolled to discover the note. Without a feasible way to sneak it back in - even to sneak it out of said shoe, in fact, without being discovered - I confessed all and was greeted with a small smile on a confused face, and a refusal to deliberately take the sock. I thought about posting it, but it takes quite a long time to post things to Australia, and that joke was already ruined.
When a final decision had been made, however, and the surplus returned to Dad's car, then began The Waiting. We had allowed "goodbye time" of an hour and a half... I'd expected lots of cracking of jokes and high fiving and such - Dad and Stepdad can both bring the entertainment to a meal. Instead, there was a dead, flat, silent atmosphere, with people checking the time frequently, just for something to say. Sister herself didn't say a word; I've been to happier funerals!
Coming back to The Battle of The Egos, which also surfaced in the cafe/diner debate for spending that hour and a half - some had stopped at motorway services and eaten a proper lunch, others had only had a packet of crisps on the train, my reflection of the day was that Dad had shown good and strong leadership and had taken decisions that were in the best interests of everybody to get the business of the day concluded easily and that he was sensitive to the mood of everyone there, particularly the most important one, the one getting on the plane. Mum, unfortunately, saw him taking over, excluding her. Which was probably just blaming him for a more general feeling of exclusion she had, having been unable to spend any time at all alone with her daughter on the day she flew around the world. Mum invited her to go for a walk around the shops together, to break up the monotony of that silent, dead atmosphere, and to get a little bit of time together. As I said, sister barely spoke all that time and didn't appear to have heard that request, which she eventually declined. Dad absolutely insisted on them having a walk together - to the better location of trying to find the departure gate in advance - but I saw in this the observation what Mum missed; that actually, regardless of what she wanted to do, Sister needed to go for a walk, and was better once she returned. Besides, if I were in her position, only just holding it together, I'd choose Dad and his jokes over Mum and her well-meaning-but-slightly-misplaced check-lists/reminders every time. But I know it sucked for Mum.
Sister had been absolutely adamant that no one was allowed to cry in front of her, at her party, earlier in the day, when we arrived at the airport, through all that death-time and even when we were by the gate. Even more so, then. Still, at that point, some of us did, we couldn't help ourselves. Which set her off (the reason she'd forbidden it), which almost made her not want to get on the plane. Super-Dad to the rescue, though, he found a lovely stewardess looking out for this lone traveller with tears down her face, who came and put a comforting arm around her and escorted her to the plane personally, letting her get on board ahead of the queue, so she had time to collect herself before it was time to take off. I walked away without looking back, calling "See you in a year!" as I did. I'll be all over-the top at the reunion party when we five return to the airport at a date to be decided, but that kind of goodbye seemed appropriate from a big sister, who, by definition, isn't supposed to really actually show too much affection to the younger sibling, right? Gotta keep those young'uns in their place! *wink*
By this time it had started to snow. So Dad cancelled his plans to stay a night with relatives nearby and got straight on the motorway. It took them longer than expected, and visibility was terrible, but they knew that if they got off at the services, they'd never get back on, and the car wouldn't start again if it stopped, type thing. It took a long time but they made it back safely. We got the train back to central London, then the tube to our hotel. We went out for dinner, but not very far, and again, the atmosphere was pretty flat. Not helped by a restaurant that was empty on a Saturday night, but we perhaps wouldn't have been the cheerfullest anyway. Mum was worrying, and angry (at Dad) by turn, but we were all still reeling a little from the shock; to me at least, it still hadn't felt quite real until after we'd left.
Sunday morning, they went for a walk, I slept in, and then we all met up to make the remaining journey. As I said, Stepdad was returning to the airport to get his flight to work, so we bid him goodbye for a few weeks in a tube station. Mum and I made it back to catch our north-bound train, kind of desperate for a sit down, a cake and a sugary cappuccino - well, more sugary in my case than hers. I was also scouting about for some useful information for my upcoming Current Events entry, to no avail, and we ended up being hurried, hurried, hurried.
Mum had the great idea of grabbing our coffees to go and going early to the train because we didn't have seats reserved. Brilliant idea, only despite being fifteen minutes early, they weren't letting people on the train, we were already at the end of a pretty large queue/mob who'd had the same idea. In the scramble, when it came, we lost. With too many bags to easily hold two cappuccinos and a bag of cakes between us (but a perfectly reasonable one across the body and one in the hand, leaving one hand free, had we have had time to consume them), we ended up standing. When we were already desperate for a sit-down. Standing for over an hour and a half. But then, people make their way down to London at different times for a weekend there, and everyone wants to come back on Sunday afternoon. What I will say, though, friends, is if you are planning a weekend or overnight stay away by train, especially if you plan to return on Sunday afternoon when it will be busy, and there is a possibility you could travel first class - get it for the return journey, NOT for the journey down. Getting it for the journey down only is just too much of a contrast on the way back if you're standing for over an hour and a half, holding on with one hand, keeping an eye on that bag you've dropped by your feet and holding and attempting but failing to drink that cappuccino you purchased a while ago now, that you didn't have time to put sugar in anyway... and it is going to make you miserable. I promise you that. Unless you are made of MUCH nicer stuff than I am. I was trying my best, and it didn't really come close. Still, we were still in one piece, and we cheered up when we were able to get seats and then when we got home.
It was turned midnight when we got the phone-call from Sister saying she'd landed, left the airport and was on the bus on the way to the hostel, but that was obviously a relief. She was knackered, bless her soul. Not only was there the emotional day before, and all the time she'd been awake, then the twenty-five hour flight where sleep wasn't as easy as expected, there was also the jet-lag and finding that twenty-five hours after getting on a plane Saturday evening, instead of it being Sunday evening, which would be bad enough, it is instead Monday morning - bad enough at the best of times, obviously, but in this case, it was raining, too. In a place that in her head, until this point, had been sunny beaches all the time.
She had a week booked in the youth hostel. Most of that she suffered a lot with the jet lag and the strangeness of the situation, and the reality that had somehow only just dawned on her that after this week, she didn't have any kind of plan. Still, the second week (she extended her stay) was better. Made a couple of friends, as we always knew she would, made a plan to relocate to another youth hostel that was cheaper, managed to get a job interview in a cafe. She got the job, although it has since finished because it's the end of the summer season there. She's still in the second youth hostel, at least until the end of this week. As she said to me, "I've made a commitment to staying here for a while now, I've bought jam." Five-year-old that she is (in a 22year old's body), God love her! Nearly two months later she has made a lot of friends, worked for a while in the cafe, and is next week, I think, heading to Queensland in order to work on a farm. And having the time of her life. *smile*
Here we are though. Me in the jacket, and Pretty Blue-Eyes with the Aussie flag around her shoulders.
For weeks and weeks, all we'd heard from the beautiful sister about her plans for the gap year were her plans for her leaving party. She felt we were nagging and didn't trust her to make sensible choices about her time away; Mum thought she was refusing to face reality - I think they both had a point.
The party went very well, held in the pub she'd been barmaiding in until the previous week. My 84 year old grandfather, who has never drunk alcohol in his life, crossed the threshold of such a venue for the first time ever in order to say goodbye. There was dancing and singing and cheesy decorations of kangaroos. It was fun. After the friends left, however, the panic started to hit! There was list-making and errands and busy-busy-busy.
As a complete side-line to this, my stepfather is retiring later this year, so he and my mum have been getting quite a lot of jobs done on the house before their income drops; so in the week leading up to the sister's departure, as stress levels are naturally rising all around, there was the added headache of getting the bathroom re-tiled! Joy!
Because my sister and I are made of the same stuff on the inside, in amongst the busy, was also a move I recognised: the listless stare at the to-do list with the mouth slightly agape, having no clue where to begin. Which is how I ended up packing the suitcase. Yes, just the one. That had an extra 9kg of stuff added and snuck in the sides in the couple of days before departure (but more on that later).
Because of the jokes we shared about my odd sock in week 11 of this competition, I thought this was a great moment for touching humour. The very sock I mentioned (or the other one to the pair, I couldn't tell), was secreted, rolled up next to a make-up bag, inside a shoe, bearing the following note with a safety pin:
Uh-oh! A Stowaway!!
I have the other of the pair,
use it if you need to think of me. xx
My paranoia rose a bit every time anyone went near the case, or, indeed, when anyone went near to my room, where I had pinned the spare sock to my noticeboard. There was a sappy card to my sis, for her to read on the plane, and then this that she'd find once she got there. Brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. Yeah, as you can tell, that's not going to last... .
So after a final good-bye meal at the her pub and not enough sleep for anyone, it's The Morning Of, where we make each other substantial breakfasts that none of us will eat. Due to the complicated family set-up we have, of divorced parents who are both re-married, including me means there are five people who want to say goodbye at the airport, plus one departing traveller, plus one (large) suitcase. Stepdad is flying to elsewhere in the country for work the following day so he, at least, will also be staying overnight in London, and therefore needs appropriate baggage. So, no chance of all getting in Dad's car then. Mum, who is a perfectly competent but really nervous driver is absolutely not going to bring our car back from London by herself. So The Wanderer is going in the car with Dad and Stepmum and her suitcase, whilst we will meet them there after taking the train. Fortunately, they leave before we do, so she's not stuck in the house wandering around in tears by herself!
Nothing ever runs smoothly though and there is a last minute battle with time, when her new e-reader decides to lose all the books on it the day before the adventure where she's really going to need them. Stepdad is on the phone with customer services in the USA all morning, and she leaves it in his capable hands when it's time to go, with the promise that if it really really isn't finished by the time we have to go, she can have mine even though I don't have quite as many books. She steals my cable for it though, just to be sure. Or to have something to remember me by - she doesn't know about that sock! But by the time came, it had been sorted half an hour ago. Good old Stepdad.
Five and a half hours later, after no particular hiccups with the journey, our contingent arrives at the airport, whereupon commences The Battle Of The Egos. Remember that extra 9kgs that were added? Now the suitcase is 6-7kgs over the allowable weight and there's already a bit of conflict between Dad & Stepmum, and Sister, over what to leave behind. There is stuff over a fairly large area of the floor, and multiple piles on different chairs, of things to leave behind or to be re-packed. Fortuneately, the airport is very quiet; in fact, quieter by far than I've ever seen an airport, even a pokey one, not a large international one like this. Although unfortunately the same, so the stewardesses kind of stare at us a little.
Stepdad and Dad, in particular are talking over each other and taking different things out of the suitcase to each other. It's kind of always like this when all our parents get together, although they are perfectly pleasant and amenable to each other to their face. Amongst the pile of items on the chair are the shoes in which the secret sock is hidden, because wedge heels are heavy and bulky and even though they were the first specific purchase for this new life lived by the beach, they are also one of the first casualties of the cut; initially, the sock wasn't even noticed at all. When it was found, it was dismissed as one of mine with no idea how it had ended up there, presumably by mistake. She doesn't recollect the joke right then, nor has it been unrolled to discover the note. Without a feasible way to sneak it back in - even to sneak it out of said shoe, in fact, without being discovered - I confessed all and was greeted with a small smile on a confused face, and a refusal to deliberately take the sock. I thought about posting it, but it takes quite a long time to post things to Australia, and that joke was already ruined.
When a final decision had been made, however, and the surplus returned to Dad's car, then began The Waiting. We had allowed "goodbye time" of an hour and a half... I'd expected lots of cracking of jokes and high fiving and such - Dad and Stepdad can both bring the entertainment to a meal. Instead, there was a dead, flat, silent atmosphere, with people checking the time frequently, just for something to say. Sister herself didn't say a word; I've been to happier funerals!
Coming back to The Battle of The Egos, which also surfaced in the cafe/diner debate for spending that hour and a half - some had stopped at motorway services and eaten a proper lunch, others had only had a packet of crisps on the train, my reflection of the day was that Dad had shown good and strong leadership and had taken decisions that were in the best interests of everybody to get the business of the day concluded easily and that he was sensitive to the mood of everyone there, particularly the most important one, the one getting on the plane. Mum, unfortunately, saw him taking over, excluding her. Which was probably just blaming him for a more general feeling of exclusion she had, having been unable to spend any time at all alone with her daughter on the day she flew around the world. Mum invited her to go for a walk around the shops together, to break up the monotony of that silent, dead atmosphere, and to get a little bit of time together. As I said, sister barely spoke all that time and didn't appear to have heard that request, which she eventually declined. Dad absolutely insisted on them having a walk together - to the better location of trying to find the departure gate in advance - but I saw in this the observation what Mum missed; that actually, regardless of what she wanted to do, Sister needed to go for a walk, and was better once she returned. Besides, if I were in her position, only just holding it together, I'd choose Dad and his jokes over Mum and her well-meaning-but-slightly-misplaced check-lists/reminders every time. But I know it sucked for Mum.
Sister had been absolutely adamant that no one was allowed to cry in front of her, at her party, earlier in the day, when we arrived at the airport, through all that death-time and even when we were by the gate. Even more so, then. Still, at that point, some of us did, we couldn't help ourselves. Which set her off (the reason she'd forbidden it), which almost made her not want to get on the plane. Super-Dad to the rescue, though, he found a lovely stewardess looking out for this lone traveller with tears down her face, who came and put a comforting arm around her and escorted her to the plane personally, letting her get on board ahead of the queue, so she had time to collect herself before it was time to take off. I walked away without looking back, calling "See you in a year!" as I did. I'll be all over-the top at the reunion party when we five return to the airport at a date to be decided, but that kind of goodbye seemed appropriate from a big sister, who, by definition, isn't supposed to really actually show too much affection to the younger sibling, right? Gotta keep those young'uns in their place! *wink*
By this time it had started to snow. So Dad cancelled his plans to stay a night with relatives nearby and got straight on the motorway. It took them longer than expected, and visibility was terrible, but they knew that if they got off at the services, they'd never get back on, and the car wouldn't start again if it stopped, type thing. It took a long time but they made it back safely. We got the train back to central London, then the tube to our hotel. We went out for dinner, but not very far, and again, the atmosphere was pretty flat. Not helped by a restaurant that was empty on a Saturday night, but we perhaps wouldn't have been the cheerfullest anyway. Mum was worrying, and angry (at Dad) by turn, but we were all still reeling a little from the shock; to me at least, it still hadn't felt quite real until after we'd left.
Sunday morning, they went for a walk, I slept in, and then we all met up to make the remaining journey. As I said, Stepdad was returning to the airport to get his flight to work, so we bid him goodbye for a few weeks in a tube station. Mum and I made it back to catch our north-bound train, kind of desperate for a sit down, a cake and a sugary cappuccino - well, more sugary in my case than hers. I was also scouting about for some useful information for my upcoming Current Events entry, to no avail, and we ended up being hurried, hurried, hurried.
Mum had the great idea of grabbing our coffees to go and going early to the train because we didn't have seats reserved. Brilliant idea, only despite being fifteen minutes early, they weren't letting people on the train, we were already at the end of a pretty large queue/mob who'd had the same idea. In the scramble, when it came, we lost. With too many bags to easily hold two cappuccinos and a bag of cakes between us (but a perfectly reasonable one across the body and one in the hand, leaving one hand free, had we have had time to consume them), we ended up standing. When we were already desperate for a sit-down. Standing for over an hour and a half. But then, people make their way down to London at different times for a weekend there, and everyone wants to come back on Sunday afternoon. What I will say, though, friends, is if you are planning a weekend or overnight stay away by train, especially if you plan to return on Sunday afternoon when it will be busy, and there is a possibility you could travel first class - get it for the return journey, NOT for the journey down. Getting it for the journey down only is just too much of a contrast on the way back if you're standing for over an hour and a half, holding on with one hand, keeping an eye on that bag you've dropped by your feet and holding and attempting but failing to drink that cappuccino you purchased a while ago now, that you didn't have time to put sugar in anyway... and it is going to make you miserable. I promise you that. Unless you are made of MUCH nicer stuff than I am. I was trying my best, and it didn't really come close. Still, we were still in one piece, and we cheered up when we were able to get seats and then when we got home.
It was turned midnight when we got the phone-call from Sister saying she'd landed, left the airport and was on the bus on the way to the hostel, but that was obviously a relief. She was knackered, bless her soul. Not only was there the emotional day before, and all the time she'd been awake, then the twenty-five hour flight where sleep wasn't as easy as expected, there was also the jet-lag and finding that twenty-five hours after getting on a plane Saturday evening, instead of it being Sunday evening, which would be bad enough, it is instead Monday morning - bad enough at the best of times, obviously, but in this case, it was raining, too. In a place that in her head, until this point, had been sunny beaches all the time.
She had a week booked in the youth hostel. Most of that she suffered a lot with the jet lag and the strangeness of the situation, and the reality that had somehow only just dawned on her that after this week, she didn't have any kind of plan. Still, the second week (she extended her stay) was better. Made a couple of friends, as we always knew she would, made a plan to relocate to another youth hostel that was cheaper, managed to get a job interview in a cafe. She got the job, although it has since finished because it's the end of the summer season there. She's still in the second youth hostel, at least until the end of this week. As she said to me, "I've made a commitment to staying here for a while now, I've bought jam." Five-year-old that she is (in a 22year old's body), God love her! Nearly two months later she has made a lot of friends, worked for a while in the cafe, and is next week, I think, heading to Queensland in order to work on a farm. And having the time of her life. *smile*
Here we are though. Me in the jacket, and Pretty Blue-Eyes with the Aussie flag around her shoulders.