The dead woman's case thing pt.3 - Bring Out Your Dead

Hello again. There's quite a bit of death in my travel diary today but I'll get to that in a bit.

....you want it now don't you? You awful lot. What is it with people and their morbid fascination with death? Talking about death (she said with morbid fascination) I had a weird head twinge this afternoon. It wasn't a twinge I was familiar with and so got lost in thought wondering whether I was about to have an embolism and drop dead at work which would be an awful place to breathe your last. My mind wandered to my underwear and I realised with a slight amount of shame that, having been away and not having fully dried my holiday laundry, I was down to the last dregs of my underpants and was in fact wearing some dreadful pink things with a run in them and weird faded patches. I then concluded that perhaps I was internally acidic and wondered how one becomes more alkali. After a while I came out of my reverie and noticed the weird twinge had gone so that was alright then. No death for me today, no siree!

Oh yeah, the work colleague who had the 'arse' with me couldn't keep up the pressure she'd put on herself and broke down to be nice to me. I'm quite upset really, if yer gonna decide you've got some principles then bloody stand by them and give me the evil eye, stand with your back to me, ignore me, just don't give me the cold shoulder for ONE measly day over an issue that really doesn't affect you and which is actually quite funny! Sigh, people nowadays just don't have enough bitterness coursing through their veins, I tell you!

Any way, here's pt. 3 of the travel diary:

Sunday 19th September 2010 - Mom and I were the last people down for the coach to Heathrow. Bleedin' hell! Mom apologised to everyone when we got on board and one person kindly told us we may be last but weren't actually late (phew!). Prior to getting on the bus and after realising the staff were waiting for just us, my Mother went a bit panicky and, well I don't know what she was trying to do, but she seemed to set off walking in a determined fashion to somewhere in the distance. Once stopped, the driver started to laugh and leaned in towards me saying

"Make sure your Mom has a wee before she gets on the plane"

Random. I was kinda glad my haunted case fell over on him now.

Check-In went smoothly and they accepted the passport I never thought I'd get after behaving like a total cretin at the American Embassy (you know I'm a dual national don't you?) and answering simple questions about myself incorrectly and signing my name in a totally different script than my usual signature before laughing like a machine gun in a panicked high pitched voice with wide eyes. During the wait to board we did nothing but run everyone down - people with kids/strollers a bloke in a woollen hat, a snot-faced woman, people stretched out on the seats, people eating like pigs - you point 'em out, we'll insult them quietly to each other. Y'know the film Love Actually? It opens and closes with an airport and talks about all the love which can be found there. Not where I was sitting. The stench of flatulence and burgers was all around, but love? Nah, kids having tantrums and me willing parents to lose it and hit them. THAT was EVERYWHERE around the area we sat. The thing that particularly peeved my Mother was the amount of hand luggage some people had with them. Actual suitcases on wheels in some cases! Who needs to drag so much shit around with them?

So, we got on the flight and I got the window seat which was great. It was next to the wing so I couldn't help but think about William Shatner on that Twighlight Zone episode where the monkey thing pulls chunks off the thing. Still, you don't hear about monkey things on wings very often so I guessed everything would be ok so long as the ailerons and Petot tubes took care of themselves (I really must stop watching Air Crash Investigation). It's ALWAYS the ailerons or the bleedin' Petot Tubes that cause the crashes on that show. They should...well, I don't know what they should do but whatever they should do they SHOULD do it and fortunately, on my flight they DID!

I was excited to find an episode of 'Rev' on my little telly. Despite my atheism (or am I a heathen?) I loved this sit com staring Tom Hollander. He was adorable in the show, bless him (she said slightly ironically). I also watched 'Shrek Ever After', 'How to Train Your Dragon' and 'Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang'.....shit, I just realised I regressed during that 11 hour flight. My vegetarian dinner was shit - they got confused and thought I was vegan. It was a vegetable masala and I HATE spicy food. I had my headphones on so didn't realise how loudly I said

'Well, they can shove that shit up their arses!'

I also sort of accidentally called the fat bloke across from Mom a 'greedy fat bastard' as he'd stuffed 2 desserts down his neck in record time. I think I embarrassed her but to be fair, she did have dinner all down the front of her. We did actually swap dinners and I had my Mom's penne pasta meal. After dinner my mother realised she had forgotten to put her anti-thrombo socks on and so asked for some assistance from me. There wasn't a fat lot of room and unfortunately I almost popped her hip out of it's socket whilst pulling at her leg in order to put the sock on for her. I wonder what we looked like in between the evil laughter, the horrified looks in my direction and the painful acrobatics. Oh yeah, there was a woman sitting just in front who kept turning around to look at us. We got into the pattern where we kept looking at her to see if she was looking at us but then she'd look around catch us staring at her! Mom won't go to the loo now because SHE'S there. I could do with a wee too.

Just to round off I'm going to confess something. One of the things that worried us most about the journey was that we were smuggling bits of 2 dead relatives into the country in my mother's luggage (in ash form). Having an American passport I got through immigration first and so went to collect the baggage. Found mine no problem but my mother's? No where to be seen. I was getting more than a little concerned that we'd caused an international incident and that I would be escorted to a side room where rubber clad, unforgiving fingers would want to explore my special places.

Then I found it.

Left Los Angeles and decanted to hotel in San Diego.