Wanna little towel darl?

I was back in the air. Two years after starting The Late Traveller, I’d finally made it back on board a giant aircraft hurtling through emptiness to a foreign land. I was Dubai-bound of course; seems every plane that leaves Australia is contractually obligated to expose us to the shopping nightmare/dream that is Dubai International. So I had ten hours to prepare myself for one of the bleakest, emptiest, most artificial places I have ever encountered. I hate Dubai so much.

But a journey of a thousand miles starts with a something something. And mine had started months before, when I decided France was next.

So why France? Three reasons. Okay, about a hundred, but ninety seven of them were food. Touching on the non-food ones, the first was the prospect of sampling a little military history first-hand. The country has been the stomping ground for a variety of conquerors, despots, revolutionaries, invaders, counter-invaders, heroic defenders and embarrassing surrenders. I’d read a million of their stories, but never seen the ground they’d stood on when they variously changed the course of human history, vanished into irrelevance, or consigned themselves and their nation to a rep for squibbing the moment shit got real. Second reason was kinda related to the first: I’d been told in no uncertain terms that I was noooot to visit Germany without a select (and very strident) group of friends. There was a hint of menace behind that entreaty, so, yeah, Charles de Gaulle rather than Flughafen Frankfurt on this outing.

And third. Paris. I’ve never thought much about the place, but…yeah. Paris. I’m not really one for ‘collecting’ experiences or hitting the big monuments for the sake of it. But standing at the bottom of the Empire State and putting a hand on the stone I’d seen in endless pictures was like a waking dream. With the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame and the Pompidou within an hour’s walk of each other, there was too much opportunity for stunned gawping to miss.

Time to go. Train tickets, hotel reservations, maps, plans, guides, printed how-tos on getting from terrifyingly huge chrome-and-glass airports to the centre of thousand-year old cities. Also a picture of my very first Airbnb apartment. More on that later. House took a little prepping prior to departure, thanks largely to a pretty amazing weekend with what I may have referred to at least once as ‘my peeps’. With the wine bottles binned, the windows triple-checked and the wifi shut down (hell with you, neighbours; maybe I’d share more if your dogs, alarms, drunk girlfriends and bogan mates would stfu once in a while), it was taxi time.

Tired old Ford station wagon taxi. Driver from somewhere in the middle east? Epic beard, a smile that was visible through it and a gentle opinion on Perth traffic and Uber drivers. Terminal One, here I come.

Airports. In a kind moment I’d call them a necessary evil, but at other hours I’d call them well-catered hell-pits. Cranky kids, nervous adults, plodding seniors and queues queues queues. I made the intuitive leap that my ‘Qantas’ flight meant an Emirates check-in, and dropped into the seatbelt-bordered maze behind chatty Jewish family. They were fine, but behind me was an increasingly frazzled mother whose one child insisted on sitting on her trolleyed suitcases and wriggling until they fell off. Her threats to control little Dan started at ‘no food on the plane’, progressed through ‘a thump’, detoured briefly past ‘I’ll delete ‘Home Alone’’ (more of a kindness really) and eventually settled at ‘Right, that’s it. No more wifi.’ Respect to her; I would have toe-tagged that odious little goblin and checked him on as baggage. It was a relief to reach the counter. And to have no children.

“Dubai? Sweet. Got your passport there mister Dunn? Sweet. Okay, I’ve checked you right through. Here’s your boarding passes and a customs form. Super sweet!”

He sure liked that word. I don’t know if there was some misguided cultural familiarisation class behind it, but young Chester was misinformed of the right number of enthusiastic affirmations to use in a conversation. Frankly I couldn’t disagree; he had me out of there faster than the checker-inners at the minesite airstrips I frequent.

Customs. Green form. Having learned from my New York experience, I had three pens secreted about my person and luggage. Boxes ticked, name scribbled illegibly (and my occupation; the heck? Are they hoping someone will accidentally divulge they’re an international terrorist?), signature on back and past the fixed smile on the woman telling people no, she didn’t have a pen every six minutes

Queue for the passport guys was nice and short, and it was minutes before I got a gruff “Next ploise” calling me to the counter.

“Passport ploise.” Look, squint, scribble. “Thank yoi. Go through ploise.”

I always thought that was a joke accent, sort of a satire on squinting, suspicious old cops in Kings Cross. Kevin the Customs Guy showed me otherwoise. I went through as instructed and joined the throng in the weirdly small departure space.

The other humans there were tired and nervous, and balanced on that weird edge you see people on when their destiny isn’t entirely in their own hands. Not everyone; some folks were dozing full-stretch across three seats, oblivious to the glares of the stander-uppers with overworked plastic bags full of vodka and perfume. But others were three feet from the gate, checking their boarding passes and the time every six minutes. I was somewhere in between, and spent the half-hour or so pacing the gaps between sprawled bodies, uncomfortable seats, celebrity perfumes and mounded alcohol. With ten hours in an aluminium chair coming my way I wanted to keep moving as long as I could.

Final texts were sent by about halfway through the boarding march. Hosties with little signs saying which zone was boarding, a leisurely trickle from the Emirates lounge, all swirling around the tight-packed fear of the econoclass. I was heading into a space where a glass of water was a tricky request, while twelve feet above me a hostie was leading a chorus of apologies for not having a guest’s exact pyjama size. Which is fine; if I coughed up for first class I’d want the pilot’s home phone and my name on a plane somewhere.

Managed to miss my seat of course. Years of boarding teeny planes with a catflap hatch at the front trained me to think the first row I passed was number one. Turns out Airbuses stick a funnel in around row forty for the peasants, so I was way down around row seventy before I realised I’d overshot. A good thirty seconds of “Sorry, ‘scuse me, sorry, whoops, hey nice shoes, oh dear was that coffee hot?” and I made it back to 45A.

I was actually dozing when 45B gave me an elbow and uttered the words that named this entry. There was the usual moment of confusion while mister brain caught up on current events, recognised the interior of an aircraft and reconciled the stern sixty-something surgical nurse beside me pointing to a pretty Belgian-by-way-of-Tunisia hostie, smiling and dangling a steamy rag in tweezers before me. We hadn’t taken off yet (I sleep fast on planes) and I didn’t know who was whom yet (I learn fast, but I ain’t that good), but I knew I didn’t wanna little towel darl. Belgian-by-way-of-Tunisia handed ‘my’ towel to the next guy, and sixty-something surgical nurse got busy swiping at every inch of exposed skin with her little towel. Her skin, not mine.

I was awake through the takeoff, but managed to nod off again right around when we flew over where that Malaysia Airlines plane went down. The ‘too soon’ rule precludes elaboration here, so my apologies if you were expecting a gag. Suffice to say I can offer little to prove or disprove the theories regarding unsuccessful searches other than to say the ocean is big. And planes are probably quite sinky.

Okay, that was a good nap. I seem to be over France. Landing. More once I know whether they’ll deport me for mispronouncing ‘Bonjour’...