Having A Terrible Time In My Bright Prison
why does my life always feel more terrible at an airport, maybe it's the light
I’m trapped at Sydney airport in a weather event called a ‘black nor’easter’ which has soaked the city — already built on the mistaken premise that drainage is a technology that was, indeed remains, undiscovered by humanity’s best engineers — and rendered air traffic more or less immobile.
At a communal Hungry Jacks dining table (are there sadder words in the English language?) I am joined by a man who looks like he has just emerged from a Tasmanian state forest under duress. Big long beard, flannel shirt; chewed with a reckless, frankly unnerving, asymmetry. He opened his phone, placed it on the table and then proceeded to listen to, at considerable volume, a podcast about the serial killer sex pest cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer.
I don’t want to be here.
My flight that was scheduled for 6.35pm was bumped to 9.30pm and just while I was writing the top of this piece they texted to let me know it will actually leave at 10pm and just now they have messaged again to let me know the flight that was scheduled for 10.15pm (where did that extra 15 minutes come from?) is now leaving at 10.30pm. At this rate I am confident I will be able to return home sometime at the reunion of the continents into Pangea Ultima.
This is all my fault. Before I left for my overnight trip to Sydney Mum was fussing like an ant about the weather. We’d had forecasts for several days in southeast Queensland saying the rain was coming so when Mum came in from outside to declare that a cloud, a big dark black cloud, was right above our very house. She was not enthused when I suggested she get a job with the Bureau of Meteorology.
In fairness to me, it was my first week back at work from six weeks’ leave to finish writing the robodebt book which I have not finished writing and my re-entry editorial commission was to file on the cursed Lehrmann defamation trial in the Federal Court of Australia.
Later that same evening, the cloud burst and the rain came down as rain is wont to do. And Mum, bless her, did a quick boundary ride of the house to tell me about which parts of the concrete outside were getting wet and I said that it was probably because of the storm and that I am sure it would be OK.
After doing the whole federal court thing on Thursday — Mum came into the office to tell me that Kalbar had received 134mm overnight — I was in a mild panic trying to file on time while leaving enough time to drive the 90 minutes to Brisbane Airport and I was tired and defeated by capitalism when Mum told me they’d also had a bit of rain down by the golf course and I snapped and said: ‘Have you only just discovered the fucking elements or something!” But in a fun way. And she started laughing and I said goodbye and there was floodwater over the road, just a little, at three separate places on the way to the airport and I had to text Mum and say there was a bit of water about.
In case she didn’t know.
Which is why, now, I am being punished.
Because now all the water is here and I can’t get home and all I want to do is go home, or at least leave the airport but I’d rather not argue with someone about getting my bag back and then trying to get a taxi to take me 400m to a hotel because they will yell at me and everyone must love me all of the time. And besides, I already went up to the customer service desk and said my app told me I needed to see the customer service desk and the woman behind the customer service desk said “oh, you need to go to the customer service desk for that” and I stepped back slightly so I could see the big letters that said SERVICE DESK on the side of the thing and said, meekly, is this not one of those? And she said no, even though I am pretty sure it was.
Have I been lied to by signage? Is the airport a house of untruth? It reminded me of the time in 2014 when Senator Jacqui Lambie was newly elected and I drove all the way to Burnie on Tasmania’s northwest coast from Hobart to cold call on her for an interview and I got to the senator’s office and it had the words ‘closed for staff training’ stenciled permanently on to the glass like the opening hours of a bank.
So then I went to the other customer service desk, the perfect circle of a customer service desk, lined up for a bit, and then lost the will to live a little. It’s not like I didn’t have things to do. I could be writing the robodebt book, for example, but I physically cannot. If I tried to write a single word while stranded at an airport (almost five hours now!) it would cause my brain to pucker up until it popped out the other side of existence. Mostly on account of the simmering fury, you see. I haven’t had my nap today. People are strange.
Writing this is helping diffuse some of the stronger emotions. A therapist would say at some point you can’t just laugh at your problems you have to actually do something about them and that may well be true but I’m also not a Boeing 737-800 crew, nor do I have the predictive meteorological prowess of my mother Deb. Oh does it look like rain does it! Is it because it is a water droplet that came from the sky!
The problem, as near as I can tell, is that there is a magnetic force that reaches out of an airport Peter Alexander store with its metal shutters rolled down after closing time that can compel a breakdown, the way birds sometimes fall from the sky due to unexplained cosmic phenomena.
I bet the Jeffrey Dahmer guy made his flight.
Observations
I only have one observation this week because my life is boring and terrifying. I was at home, working from the office when a parcel arrived for me. In town the delivery people know us all quite well now and I watched as the van pulled up and the woman looked around the yard cautiously to see if she could spot the blue heeler and I realised that in order to be most helpful I’d probably just yell out through the heavily tinted window through which she absolutely could not see me. And I could have yelled come on in or you’re right or something equally helpful but instead she heard a disembodied voice yell there is no dog like I was in one of those bad joke set-ups. She paused, having heard some whisper on the wind, and I yelled the same thing again, more forcefully this time: THERE IS NO DOG. It sounded philosophical now. Declarative. There is no dog, to be sure, but what queer horror has risen in its place? What hath we wrought?
Turns out I filed this way too early. I got home at 2.30am. Things got weird.
In answer to your words “everyone must love me all of the time”. We do Rick. All your subscribers love you. Hope you get yourself out of this mess we call Sydney soon and get to fly home pronto