We’re in the departure lounge at South Terminal, it’s such a familiar place that I have my favourite seat at Costa.
I am sad, it’s official.
If Valerie Russell doesn’t get a move on her luggage will be offloaded and she’ll miss her flight.
There’s a guy over there who LOVES the sound of his own voice; everyone within 5 nautical miles can hear him. He’s not a passenger, he’s a plasterer working on refitting a shop in here.
He sounds like a caricature of a Sarf Lundun wideboy – just think of how Harry Enfield might translate his Loadsamoney creation to a middle-aged, crop-haired shouty-while-talking loudmouth and you’ve got the general idea.
In the security queue in front of us was a late 20s guy who got hauled out because he had a tin/container in his clear plastic bag that was obviously hugely over the 125ml limit.
Think: large tin of toffee and you’ve got the general idea. And in the tin was…
Hair gel.
Because a chap with short hair (not much longer than military length) needs a vat of hair gel – on the flight.
I said to Soph ‘Good job he’d packed his KY’.
It is possible that I said that a little too loudly and Soph may have hit me.
Oh-oh, Valerie Russell’s boat has metaphorically sailed, they’ve just announced that her luggage has been removed from the flight.
Perhaps she’s in the toilet having a massive poo, poor girl.
Soph’s disappeared. I looked up from cleaning out my wallet (I don’t know how I got diverted in to that one either!) and she’d vanished.
Perhaps she’s gone for a poo too. Or maybe she’s gone to find Valerie Russell.
In other news…
The Prospective New Horse is being vetted tomorrow morning.
I’m trying to stay calm and not get too excited about him, if the vet says ‘no’ then it’s not going to happen.
The prospect of having an extra mouth to feed has woken me up, I’ve started putting feelers out to see who might be interested in paying me to do something.
Initial response: fair, but I need to convert interest in to a piece of work. I’m trying to stay focussed on a commuting circle with ‘home’ in the middle which might limit my choices.
There is a guy sitting behind me whose mullet is so regal the length of hair down the back of his neck is actually fashioned in to a scale model of the train of Princess Diana’s wedding dress, whilst the hair on top of his head resembles a field of corn stubble, the hair on the sides of his head is shaved right to the scalp.
It’s an amazing effect, the stylist/sculpturist responsible for creating this piece of art noveau should get an award – for services to the comedy industry.
I can’t help wondering what nationality the mullet-wearer is; if he were a Brit he’d have the Mick taken out of him so much that even the thickest of skins would have died of shame by now.
He obviously belongs to a nationality that doesn’t know the meaning of the words ‘shame’ or ’embarrassment’ when coupled up with the concept of hairstyle or personal grooming.
I don’t wish to foster any nationalistic stereotypes here, but I’m leaning towards German. Or maybe Australian?
When I went to pick-up my mum at the Tel-Aviv airport a few weeks ago (back when I was still in Israel), the plane for Paris arrived at about the same time as a plane from Frankfurt. I therefore occupied myself, when waiting for her, with trying to guess the nationality of the people exiting the luggage area: French? German? Israeli? or (rather unlikely) other?
There was this one tall guy, with long gray hair, a cowboy hat, and socks in his sandals. I was sure he was German (had he been Texan, he would have worn boots instead of sandals with socks). Turned out he was French (or speaking a good enough French to pass as one, while most likely coming from Paris according to the brand name on the bag he was carrying). I was mortified on his behalf.
As I too would have been mortified if the wearer of the Mullet Extraordinaire had been a Brit.