Part Three
Onwards ever onwards. Please accept my apologies in advance for any undue irascibility in the sections that follow. As I am typing this, in bed, I have just drunk my morning coffee and taken my many medicines for my Arabian Flu. The only trouble is, there has not been a night’s sleep to proceed them. For the second night in a row, too. Flying back here principally during the night watches, only to plunge headlong into the blasted lurgy has conspired to utterly reverse my body clock. Wherever it is in the world that’s 12 hours ahead of Doha: I could be running them ragged there, right now. Probably. I shall need to experiment with ways of reversing this situation, over the coming three days, or my glorious return to Higher Education administration may not be all my employers and I are hoping for. Time will, so to speak, tell.
So yes – Ladies and Gentlemen, as an opening digression to this third movement (now certainly of four) – Pegasus Airlines.
For the uninitiated, it’s a sort of Arabian/Turkish Peninsula Ryanair, only without any adherence to timetables, decency, cleanliness, or any sense of customer-facing charm. So much the same. The only thing that’s a going concern is the no doubt quite slender profit margin protected in cattle-prodding their flyers on board.
In fairness, I have only myself to blame. In the final analysis, this October to September stint could do with being a bit of a money-spinner. Yes, I have plans to make good use of my time, and have some fun when not depositing my lung linings down the loo, but I am also living on a pretty sharp budget and have one or two debts to get cleared-off as I build a bit of a nest egg with which to buy our dog his food in Academic Year 2018/9. He shows little appreciation of this, naturally, but was at least pleased to see me, briefly, over the festive season. So it is that, as I periodically fence with HMRC over the tax they owe me and erroneously took off me until comparatively recently, I tend to do things pretty much ‘on the cheap’, with the future in mind. A little discomfort here and there, yes, but mind the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves, as some bastard said, one day.
So rather than fork out £££ for a Christmas to New Year set of direct, movie, food and wine-soaked flights of almost painful comfort with Qatar Airways, I instead sought to save a few bob with Pegasus. Four hours to Istanbul, a brief layover, then another four or so to London. Fortnight off, and rinse and repeat, in reverse. Saving, in the process, more than the price of the fire of a car for nine days in the UK because, because, a train from Ramsgate to Middlesbrough on the 27th December, to visit one’s hardworking wife, is apparently something that should cost £154! That car was bloody marvellous. I wish I’d driven it back here, given what followed.
The internet did its level best to reach out and pull my wrist away from my credit card as I levered it from my wallet. “Don’t do it Suggzy!” it intoned. “Look at Trip Advisor, for God’s sake! Some of those people haven’t recovered and never will!”
But no, I smugly punched in the numbers and sealed my fate. What a bargain.
Four flights. Every one of them delayed. No information as to why. Two connections. The first missed by an hour, and the second shortened to a slightly hairy 50 minutes. Not a moment of contrition. Not so much as a smile from anyone. No offer of a free glass of water, or advice as to where to go. “Get on next flight” said the tombstone-faced cow of a lady on the Special Customer Service Desk (ha!) at Sahiba Gocken Airport. I had to strike up the band with her more than a little just to elicit when that might be, and from where, and if my luggage stood a snowball’s chance in hell of being on it or near it. All the while, despairing legions of customers pressed at my back, but give me credit, I stood my ground. I didn’t like the cut of her jib, and by the end of my conversation with her, I think she knew, however briefly, that I was not the happiest of campers that night.
No, nothing. Diddly squat. Just continual onboard exhortations as one tried to cobble some sleep together (a tense subject for me just now – is it coming across?) to SPEND SPEND SPEND, delivered in klaxon volume Turkish and English roughly every 17 minutes or so, from loudspeakers above our heads. Carts rolled, up and down, as shekels, Riyals, pounds, Euros, buttons and God knows what changed hands so that passengers might cling onto life over a KitKat, a watery Nescafe and a scratchcard. I consciously took the decision those two nights to simply starve to death, if at all possible. And not just to bring a happy release from the unmitigated, foul-smelling, cramped, noisy and irritating Hell of it all. No. Just to ensure I really put the fuckers out.
“Bollocks – that plummy-sounding git in 15B’s pegged it – better get onto Stansted. This is going to cost us. Bigtime.”
And then, through it all, came the presence into my life of Little Mehmet. Tousled-haired infant, flying to Istanbul with Mummy and Granny. A flash of mischief in his little eyes..
Before I end this little bit of teeth-gnashing, I should like to place it on record I have nothing against little Mehmet. Two years old, perhaps? No experience of life and the mores of the traveling Englishman across the aisle. Nor those of the humour-free-zones in the form of the Americans sat in front of him. No empathy with how tired, exasperated, and increasingly downright pissed-off the general company was. He is not to blame. But his actions wrought upon my person the most terrible pain.
Lad was just not a flier. He arrived in the arms of his two bearers, bawling for all his life was worth. The charge in my headphones had long expired, so I was going to have to take the performance live, and not so far from the stage as to be in any way comfortable. And a four hour celebration of the full range of the infant voice it was, too. An eyeballs out tour-de-force of all the greatest hits a child has ever thrilled us with. A toddler’s paean to the injustice of having to fly, when it should have long ago nestled into sleep.
The slightest movement. A second, a single second of jostling from the arms of one loving woman to the other and he would come in at a register that would have alerted dogs, sleeping in the mountains of Carpathia below us. And it was like the executioner’s axe to the back of the neck, but without the thrill of blissful expiry and eternal silence to follow. Furthermore, he led a choir, the numbers of which grew, as we sped on through the atmosphere. No other child aboard, under the age of six, went unaffected. Previously mute, socialised and biddable children found full song, during those happy hours with Pegasus. Mehmet led them, and us, into teeth-crumbling Hell of melody-free Death Screaming.
And frankly, Mummy and Granny kept up a decent rhythm with him. It transpired, after not too long, that they were proudly of Essex stock. As with the little one, it was the voices that stood them out. And, handily for the minders of a Nuclear Package, on the thinnest of hair triggers, a pair of right fucking fidgeters.
A quarter hour of that dreadful, dreadful flight did not pass without the need for one or the other of them to get up, for one reason or another. To pee, to scrabble around in the overhead locker for an item unseen, or to “stretch me fackin’ legsferabit”. Constant, it was. There was point in the midst of all of this when a visibly weakened air steward just took himself off for a fairly lengthy shit, simply to be cocooned from it all.
And every time. Every time they passed the child from hand to hand, like a boiling hot rugby ball, there came this refrain:
“You ‘ave Mehmet a minute?”
“Yeah, ah’ll ‘ave Mehmet a minute.”
“You ‘ave Mehmet a minute?”
“Yeah, ah’ll ‘ave Mehmet a minute.”
On and on and on and on and on and bastard on.
The band was completed with the bass, provided by the American woman in front of them. She, like so many of her ilk, was a keen purchaser. A real commerce fan. No opportunity to part with a greenback or two could be passed up. So, every time a cart lurched into view, she would put in a lengthy order, and reach for every credit card imaginable – a real rainbow of plastic – none of which worked, on Tinpot Shitbags Pegasus Air. But every time, she got them out, tried and failed, before, oh so helpfully, in her honeyed, basso Southern drawl, pointing out:
“Oh, ‘sokay, ah have some DURMZE”
It took a little while for me to register, as I wiped away the tears of pain, that what was saying was Dirhams. But I did get it, and she did say it. A lot. Really, a lot.
So when they got really tight, this Four Piece of the Apocalypse, with Mehmet up front on vocals, sounded a bit like this:
<DURMZE>
<SCREAM!>
<MEHMET A MINIT>
<SCREAM!>
<DURMZE>
Try it over a few times. Practice, get the beat right. Then record it. Then turn the volume up on your Hi Fi and play it from distance of three feet, on an unending loop for four hours. And come out of the experience quite as you were. Go on, try it. No, that’s right, you don’t have to, because, lovely reader, I lived it for you.
I will never every fly with Pegasus Airlines again. I have had to live for four days with abject flu and cabin fever, to relinquish myself of the freshness of the whole cacophonous odyssey into the darkest heart of human kind and back again.
Anyway, like the mucus, that’s off my chest. Where were we?
Yes. We were at Room B. Mr Ali had departed once again. My hands were my own and I looked to see the sign promising MAN X-RAY.
“Okay – a little indignity first, but it’ll all be plain sailing after this”, I told myself.
Another queue, but this time one that moved at quite a lick. The men in front of me were given a package containing a not-entirely-fashionable sort of one-size-fits-all ‘sexy cape’ that slit open from throat fastening to belt buckle, and were ushered, lickerty-spit, mind you, into cubicles, only to emerge, seconds later, for fear of an attendant barking at them, with it on, or partially on, grasping their paperwork and heading for a door with a red lightbulb above it and a sign in Arabic.
My turn came, and I slipped out of my shirt, tie, waistcoat, cufflinks and jacket like a slippery eel. Well, I did it as quickly as I could, feeling rather unmanned by the sounds of shouting from the other side of the door with the light. As with some of the cheaper haircuts I have endured in my life, I had the vague sense I was about to be accidentally conscripted into an army of some sort. Leaving my kit in a crumpled mess on the floor, I joined the glittering parade.
About three feet from the wings and my debut, the door swung open and out came a lady Doctor. I thought this a bit de trop at the time, given the anxiety given over to keeping us boys and girls apart in so many other walks of life I had thus far seen, or read about. Hopefully any inadvertent coquettishness did not show; just my beer gut, honed to a somewhat embarrassing dome, over the pre-departure celebrations.
My time arrived, I plastered on a smile and went forth to dazzle in the lights.
And joined another queue, which snaked round to the admin end of the operation. Chappie with a screen, showing pics of various lungs from ‘round the world. As my turn came, I handed him my file and he battered in a series of data.
“Name?” he bellowed enquiringly.
“Christopher Cox” I came back, reading it, like him, off the screen. Tickled me – him, not so much.
“Yes, yes, TWO now!” came another call from the other side of the theatre. I was sort of jostled there, to watch a very tall, thin, Indonesian fellow pressing himself against a sort of chest-high flat screen TV, his cape fully akimbo.
“Hold breath!”, came the next direction. His tiny form tightened, a while. A buzz, he relaxed and after a momentary pause he was applauded off, re-buttoning as he went. Roses may have been thrown. Ladies underwear, certainly. Red-blooded stuff, it was.
“I can do this” I thought, as I took my bow, drew in my breath, and gave it everything I had.
And I did do it. But then it went wrong. No buzz. Instead an uncomfortable pause, but with no prompter in sight. What may have been a curse from the man behind the screen. Exhortations back at him from the ‘photographer’ and eventually a hurried and voluble discussion, somewhere above the orchestra pit, which to me seemed a bit heated.
But here’s the thing. Chaps over here get, at times it seems, quite aerated. But rarely is it possible, without a word of the lingo to draw upon that’s appropriate to use in judgement as to whether or not professional energies are being expended, or if someone’s about to land somebody one. It’s most odd. In the street, for example, you might as well be hearing:
“DAVE! Been an age Bro! Wife and kids alright?”
“Dude! Peachy thanks, just got the new Landcruiser and the camel’s expecting again!”
Or:
“DEVIL! You went to the cinema with my Cousin, and she’s engaged to be married!”
“Bollocks! It was dark in there, you can’t prove anything. And, HA, I have a knife.. so don’t try anything!”
No clue, most of the time.
The discussion over, I got what I can only describe as being ‘wrenched about a bit’. Not much by way of direction, for my own little photo shoot. Just a series of angles into which my flesh was bent against the photographic screen. “Left boob, right boob, show us ‘em both together love, riiiiight, one more and weeee’re done! Suuuuper. Off you pop darling.”
It’s funny in the re-telling, but in the absence of a simple performance of a simple task, my own sense of humour vanished with the flash of the bulbs. Something was, quite clearly, wrong. Routine gig for all the other debutants, but with me, they had to see more. Which meant something had to be seen, didn’t it? No other explanation. Blood drained out of me, and I reeled back to the changing rooms, drew breath, and covered-up again.
Morale spiralled downwards, as I tottered round to Room B, where an uncomplicated joust with another needle awaited. As always, none of your “sharp scratch… aaaaaand, done”, but instead the usual thrust, parry, and half a pint’s gone. They bandaged me up and I emerged, blinking into the heat of the day. Mr Ali relieved me of my papers, and the driver suddenly sparked back into life and whizzed us back in 15 minutes. Must have got directions off someone.
Long 15 minutes that, though. I quietly diagnosed cancer, deportation, and a long battle with some manner of radiotherapeutical treatment before expiry and the grave back in Blighty. Because I am an hysterical bloody idiot. And because SWK was not there to flash a smile, kiss me on the cheek and tell me I was worrying about nothing. I got a bus back to the office, stewed a bit there, got home, stewed a bit more, and went to stew in my sleep. Did I call any of my loved ones to discuss this? Nah, such would be the actions of a sane and a balanced individual, wouldn’t they? I contented myself with the thought of, post-diagnosis, crumpling into their embrace as they freed my hands from the cuffs at Heathrow. Because, again, I am an hysterical bloody idiot.
The following day, I woke up about 80% deaf in my left ear. On the plus side, this was something new to worry about, so in many ways it was just lovely. On the negative side, two days later I was profoundly deaf in my left ear, and it began to hurt. I soldiered on, thinking I would get the matter easily resolved by popping over to the on-campus clinic.
Ho ho. I was there for three hours. I handed over enough money to feed a family, had my blood pressure tested about 29357 times (almost a pastime in this country), before a Doctor calmly and incorrectly diagnosed an ear-infection. Antibiotic drops. Four days, you’ll be fine.
In the meantime, the news came in that I was to be sent back for more X-Rays, which did wonders for my mood. In the end I discussed it with a couple of folks at work and it transpired that such call-backs were not uncommon, there being a much shared belief that though they have the kit to do it, the X-Ray folks are just a bit crap at it. It being me, I silently dismissed this, but at least bore it in the surface of my mind.
Z and I tailed over there again, and I went in alone, to report to Window 192. At Window 192, heads were shaken and I was sent to Window 191. At Window 191, my form was stamped and I went to Room 13. None of these sounded much like the famous Room C to me.
Room 13 contained a slightly pinched lady in a mask. Always sets your mind at rest, does a medical mask. They soon popped them on the other day, when I had a nice fluey coughing fit.
“Do you have a history of Tuberculosis?” she asked, as I sat down. Always with the bedside manner. Tissue? Soft, enquiring eyes? A brush of a hand on your palm? No, just get it out there. “Yer on yer way out, pal. Need to borrow a ‘phone?”
I confidently (I think, I was planning my funeral playlist) explained that inoculations had been given to me for various things from 1974 to 1987, and as such, with relevant boosters and whatnot, I should be in apple pie order. Just ‘phone Jeremy Hunt – he’ll give you the bullet points. Best stamp the form, eh?
Nup. She stamped me, with the end of a sort of SCART lead. And then drew a big circle round it in black marker, told me not to get it wet, and come back in 48 hours. Bye!
Matters were mounting up a bit, for your narrator. Lots on quite a small mind.
I must try and get some sleep, and take some more of my drugs. Finish all this nonsense up next time ’round. Including THAT salad.
suggzy 