The return...
The disadvantage of a long weekend is that it’s just long enough for you to feel like you are actually on a proper holiday; then you have to come home.
Although we have most of Saturday to sightsee before catching our flight, it still has that depressing ‘it’s Sunday and I’ve got to go back to work tomorrow’ feel to it, so much of our ‘ooh, look at that’ comments have an enforced jollity to them as we try and pretend that we are not sad to be leaving so soon.
We do more wandering. The weather is grey and drizzly – a perfect excuse for finding another cute pub, reading the papers and necking more Guiness. It’s probably a good thing that I don’t live in Dublin – as the drink is more like a meal I would end up an anorexic alcoholic.
We slouch back to the hotel in the afternoon to get our bags – wave goodbye to the Dergvale hotel and its funeral meal accompaniments…and then goodbye to the tall pointy thing in O’Connell Street that makes people bump into other people whilst staring at how high it is and continuing walking.
We look like seasoned professionals on the bus this time – correct change ready and waiting in hand as the bus pulls up (strangely on time as well – is it only England who cannot fathom this public transport malarkey?).
The airport looms into view, and the waiting lounge becomes our home once more. It does supply very good cake however, and we munch contentedly as the clock ticks on. We board the plane on time, the plane takes off on time and we land slightly before we are meant to – are the Irish pilots on some kind of bonus scheme for minutes saved?
It is grey, cold, wet and miserable in England. Our dejection at being home is compounded when (after ringing the parking people to let them know we are back, and being confidently told that the minibus will be there in 5 minutes to pick us up) we discover that they have told 47 other people the same thing. The ensuing fight to get on the bus is equivalent to old ladies at a jumble sale after they have been told that there is a pair of good quality gardening slacks on the clothes stall. We admit defeat on the first one – but develop a good tactic to ensure we get a seat on the second. He stands with the bags at one end of the layby – I stand with tickets at the other. The bus arrives and we board it from different ends in a way that the SAS would be proud of – steely-eye staring at the opposition, thrusting elbows and me shouting ‘go, go, go, go!’
We try not to look at the open-mouthed innocents left standing on the pavement for the second time – in the hard world of airport pick ups it is survival of the fittest… and I feel that we have established our place in the food chain.
We pick up the car, and get going – I make a point of reminding him that this trip had been my idea, and paid for by my bank account, so out of courtesy he should return the compliment…I quite fancy Barcelona next time...
posted by Liberty Slutzski @ 12:23 pm
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