There was a time I believed life was perfect. I had it all. In order of priority: Hot girlfriend, nice flat, a well paid job where I choose the hours, an awesome gaming PC with an 8.1 surround sound system, and a limited edition VW Golf GTi. Why anyone would want to leave a life like that behind to explore the backwaters of the world is beyond me. There is nothing to see anywhere that you can't visit through the window of a nice big flat-screen TV whilst warm in an armchair, enjoying a quality delivery pizza. At least you can switch off the TV if you get bored or afraid.
That said, unfortunately, I'm no longer enjoying my perfect life. I’m at Heathrow Terminal 3 getting ready to board a plane to some desert called Jordan. ‘Why?’ You might ask. Well, that is down to my hot girlfriend Jean who woke up one morning and decided this is what we had to do. No choice. No questions asked.
I was woken up that fateful day with the statement “We’re going travelling.”, as she enthusiastically jumped onto the bed.
It wasn’t even 11am and she had the gall to disturb my stupor. I grunted back at her “I’m already travelling.” I’m not sure what I meant, but I didn’t want to be disturbed and hoped that would shut her up.
No such luck. She continued to say “We’re going to go travelling around Southeast Asia. It’ll be good for us.” I sucked back in a string of dribble. “What are you talking about? What time is it? Why are you disturbing me?” “10:52. I’m going to book us flights to Bali. We can relax by the beach drinking cocktails. See monkeys in Ubud and I’ve heard it’s got good scuba diving. You could learn there.”
I can’t believe she tried to sell me this madness by mentioning those three things.
- Cocktails. If I want alcohol, I want beer, not some poncy drink that basically tastes like fruit juice.
- Monkeys! Everyone knows they are rabid little thieves. You don’t go and visit sick criminals do you?
- Scuba diving. Every time she mentions it, I find myself falling into a coma. I can't imagine anything more boring or a bigger waste of time than sitting in a fish tank waiting to die.
And a side note… What kind of place is called Ubud???
Good job she works in finance and not sales. She’d be crap. I tried so hard to make her forget about this crazy nonsense by suggesting something more reasonable, like shoe shopping. My poor distraction ploy failed. Good job I don’t work in politics.
She then set about planning this ‘life adventure’, whilst I slowly got my brain into gear. I need at least half an hour between waking up and getting out of bed, whereas she is more of a ‘Wake up. Get up. Done.’ type of person. By the time I had tuned into the day, she had already decided that South East Asia alone wouldn’t be quite enough torture for me and that we would stop off in some desert called Jordan along the way. Her logic being that we could break up the journey and ease into the time difference, plus for reasons beyond logic she wants to visit an old falling down town called Petra.
It seems as though before I'd had a chance to finish my breakfast, we were beginning this journey to hell. That was just over three months ago.
I guess I should have seen the warning signs. She'd always talked about wanting to do more, see more. I just presumed she wanted to do more shopping and see more films, which would have been fine with me as opposed to this. I could have even dealt with a visit to an art gallery to stand in silence looking at a wall a child threw paint at, or worst case scenario, an opera. If we were a few years older I’d have been convinced she was having a midlife crisis. Perhaps she is and there’s something I don’t know. Maybe this is her last hurrah. I hope not though. She’s a pretty good cook and women who can cook are hard to come by these days, especially now we’re all feminists.
So here I am, already two hours into my worst nightmare, in one of my least favourite places, surrounded by thousands of germy children and their sleep deprived owners, wondering if I should ‘accidentally’ lose my boarding pass or get stuck in the toilet, or shout BOMB! Perhaps though, to save myself from having a rubber clad hand shoved up my arse along with the wrath of Jean, I should sit here quietly and prepare myself mentally for what will undoubtedly be six months of sleeping in shoddy tents, being attacked by giant insects and eating rotten food scraps.
Looking around I'm reminded of a soppy film Jean forced me to watch that was depicting Heathrow airport as a place full of love. I didn't get it then, and it makes absolutely no sense to me now. Everyone here looks like a lost soul stuck between the land of the living and dead. Those who do kiss or embrace do so like they've gone without human touch for years, or that they're desperately hungry and will eat just about anything. The rest move without purpose, all incapable of walking in a straight line. It is a wonder that any of them make it to the departure gate. My suspicion is that the airport was designed by a computer game developer, to ensure no one ends up lost in a digital wasteland or sleeping here as if it were their home.
Just popped into the toilets to escape the crowds and have a sit down without someone sitting next to me invading my personal space. It ticked the box for providing sanctuary, but there was no entertainment. Recently I used one in a bar that had sensors on the urinal to control a gun in a shooting game. I unwittingly entered into competition with another man in the pub after I announced my score out loud to the group I was with. Clearly, although I didn’t know him, he took this as a challenge and shortly thereafter waved his phone in front of my face, showing me that he had achieved a higher score. Despite me not being easily goaded, especially into a pissing competition, I rose to the occasion and on my next visit to the urinal ensured my bladder was near bursting point to maximise my winning potential. My score smashed his and of course I took a picture of it to smugly flash in his weasley face. I thought that would be the end of it and I could head home with my head held high and a gold medal hanging from my balls, but before I’d finished my pint, he returned and shoved his world defeating score in my line of sight. Knowing it was unlikely I’d better it, I symbolically threw in the towel and left the bar dejected and defeated. That was probably a good thing, because I’m sure that if he’d gone in for a final attempt, someone would have found his lifeless blood drained corpse laying by the urinal after he’d tried to squeeze every last drop of fluid from his body to reach an otherwise unattainable score.
I arrived back from the toilet to find Jean furiously updating her social media accounts. I think she might have some sort of delusion that she’ll be one of these online celebrities, becoming famous and making a fortune from being nothing special. I’ve been watching her covertly, and she has already posted multiple tweets or whatever they're called these days (shouts on here), selfies to Instagram and is mid-way through writing the longest and most dull blog post ever to clog up the arteries of the internet. For contrast between reality and the grotesque lies she is portraying I’ll have to include some of what she writes, so you can see for yourself how these people who have ‘awesome’ lives are basically just dressing shit up because they want to make you feel that your life is a total waste and they have discovered the secret to divinity.
"I have finally convinced my boyfriend that he should get up from the couch and experience real life and the world. When we first discussed going travelling, he seemed a little hesitant. I initially put it down to him being tired, but as he made so little effort with the planning it was clear he wasn’t overly fussed and would rather wither and die on the couch, shooting computer people. While he’s still trying to come across as indifferent to going away, I’m now sure there is a little bit of excitement seeping through."
How nice of her to belittle me in her first ever blog post. What she doesn’t realise is that there is a big difference between insanity and shooting computer people. Note also that she said ‘discussed going travelling’. A discussion to her, like with so many women is her making a decision and telling me that’s what we’re going to do. I thought we were supposed to live in a democracy!
I’ve been wishing so hard that I could get out of this and go home that I just tried clicking my heels together three times, but it had the opposite effect of what I was trying to achieve and my departure is now imminent as they have announced the boarding gate is open. As soon as the tannoy system made a ‘bing bong’ noise, the masses were out of their seats and rushing towards the gate, as if there was a fire and the only way out was on the plane. It isn't going to leave in the next two minutes, morons! I’ll just sit here and continue writing my will until the last possible moment.
One final departing thought. I hate flying. I really don't know how anyone manages to do it and remain sane. They tell you that it's the safest form of travel but for me there is no comfort in statistics.
I was safer at home.