This time last week I was at Changi, kipping on a beferned slumberette in ‘The Sanctuary’, otherwise known as the arse-end of gate E5 near where they park the disabled golf carts. It wasn’t my first choice for a seven-hour transit bask waiting for my flight home to Charmingville. In the not-so-distant past, I was a bewheeled corporate hamster gainfully employed by a London consortium of pre-crisis profligates who had us all flying Business or – if you were a skilled lickspittle – First to PowerPoint training sessions in the Algarve. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. These days I kill time airside hoiking my crazed Russian Market wheelie bag round the Duty Free, pilfering eye-cream samples, taste-testing flavoured vodkas or going round and round on the Skytrain just for larfs.
So having scoffed my pocket-linted plane loot of breakfast rolls and mini milks from the last 12 hours aloft, I malingered in an $8 shower at the Traveller’s Lounge, then searched for one of those free foot-massage chairs. But my plans – to doze, earplugged and masked, in a fragrant fug of perfume testers while having my feet shiatsued gratis by a mechanical finger wizard – were thwarted at every turn. Bickering Chinese grannies in rhinestone Christmas knitwear with no socks on and way too much inexplicable hand luggage (salad spinner, jumbo pack of Pampers, beets) hogged every chair in the terminal. I eventually settled for the aforementioned garden nook, which had a view of the control tower framed by a massive moss ‘n’ orchid studded carved styrene sculpture of a glitter-spangled turtle couple holding hands and standing on their hind legs in a bed of weeping fig. Oh, Singapore. Anyway. Two of the contoured recliners were occupied by giggling Indian gents and a third by a ginger woman snoring like a walrus. She was only slightly louder than the tannoyed Kenny G, whose saccharine noodles have had me reaching for my sidearm on more than one occasion. Too jetlagged to give a shit, I settled in despite the aural distraction and the felonious garden art and soon drifted into a perfect, blissful snooze.
It was the best sleep I’d had since undertaking my stint as the only female person on the ill-fated MV Nanjing Pluck. Battered to death by an enraged polar wind, the old girl ran aground on an uncharted igneous atoll. I’m sure you saw it on the news. It was a life-threatening but not unwelcome diversion; every failed Murmansk-Spitsburgen Sturgeon Muster has a silver lining after all. I’m not sure if you’ve ever been stranded for 10 days on a volcanic outcrop surrounded by apocalyptic ocean with a crate of 100-proof aqvavit, 17 thumping great twentysomething Norwegian deckhands and a litre of rubbing alcohol, but there wasn’t much sleep for this little puffin, let me give you the tip.
Meanwhile, back in the Lion City’s vaunted aeronautical hub and coaxed into consciousness by the afternoon glare bouncing off those gigantic loved-up chelonians, I dragged myself and my flabby air-pillow off to the departure gate for the uneventful leg home.
After a rather invasive but not unpleasant Ebola screening at Pochentong, I hauled my souvenir meerschaum collection and vintage Minke harness through Customs to see The Hubster’s beam light up the arrivals breezeway. At first I thought he might be drunk – you’ll know by now he’s not the most demonstrative helpmeet in Love’s collection. But a month is a long time to spend with a relentlessly priapic rabbit and a broken fridge with the instructions in technical Dutch.
“I have a surprise for you, darling,” he gushed as we loaded up the aircon taxi – another first (I usually hail a tuk tuk and get home to find a ‘Gone to Mum’s’ note, which means he’s actually playing boules with a slurry of Phnom Penh’s finest, up to his eyepits in sangria cask). As I dumped my Nordic souvenirs in the hallway, he made me close my eyes and led me into the bedroom. Taking up space once reserved for our ancient round (don’t ask) Ikea nap sack was a brand new, king-sized Sealy Posturepedic. It would’ve cost an arm and a leg. Certainly a round trip to the Algarve flying Club Class. But with a bed like this, who needs lie-flat seats? I’m not going anywhere in the foreseeable future, unless you count the Land of Nod.