Tuesday 30 November 2010
Whoever wrote It's a long way to Tipperary* had clearly never attempted a trip to Australia. Now that really is a long way. But I'm now over half way there in miles and time. Changi airport, Singapore, to be exact, at 9pm local time. Somehow I have missed seeing any daylight this Tuesday. A weird feeling - a bit like becoming an honorary Laplander for the day (but without the fringe benefits of owning a flowing red cape and long white beard). Frankfurt and its surrounds may look quite twee when you're enjoying a Glühwein at the Christmas market (ignoring the fact that your toes are so cold, they feel as if they could fall off at any second). But when you are trying to travel anywhere during the first major snowfall of the winter, it becomes a different story entirely. As we experienced yesterday. Fortunately for me, amid the hundreds of flight cancellations and complete chaos at the transfer desks, my flight finally got away at shortly after 1am - three hours late. This was after eventually solving an unnamed technical problem with the aircraft and waiting a further hour and a half in the queue for the de-icing machine. The joys of winter travel. Yet I really shouldn't whinge about long haul travel in the modern age. Imagine taking part in a cricket tour to Australia 50-60 years ago. This would have taken the best part of 7 months out of your life - 2 months on the boat to get there in the first place, 2-3 months of cricket (including extensive pan-continental travel within the vastness which is Australia), then another 2 months to while away on the boat back to Blighty. And to think today's England supporters call themselves barmy. That sort of time commitment really is the stuff of a bygone age of travel. (* Harry Williams and Jack Judge wrote It's a long way to Tipperary according to Wikipedia, so I imagine there is a 50:50 chance of this being right).
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