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СпутникиРНSpaceXРоскосмосNASAEmer Of The Past makes decisions that fill Emer Of The Present with anxiety, but having a packed schedule before this UK wedding was delightful
I repeatedly find myself in situations where Emer Of The Past has made decisions that fill Emer Of The Present with apprehension and anxiety. Emer Of The Past loves organising, or agreeing to, complicated plans or expensive commitments, safe in the knowledge that it’s her future self’s problem.
Last weekend I flew to the UK to attend the wedding of a dear friend in a beautiful little town southeast of London. I could have kept it simple, flying to the nearest airport, booking the same accommodation as the bulk of the guests, and minimising the amount of foostering around I’d have to do.
However, months in advance I’d decided to pile some extra activities on to the itinerary: a couple of West End shows, three different hotels over four days, and dozens of tube and train journeys across London and the southeast.
Emer Of The Past was confident that Emer Of The Future would be thrilled with the plans, but as the trip approached, my travel anxiety began to ramp up. It’s not a fear of flying that gets my blood pressure up, it’s the persistent catastrophising I do as I anticipate what might go wrong four or six steps ahead in the schedule.
I won’t have even left Dublin and I’ll be stressing about being too hot on the tube with my case and plotting what I will do if I lose the key to my accommodation in Canterbury – something I won’t even have in my possession for another 36 hours.
I’m pleased to say that, despite initially cursing myself for overstuffing my few days, it was a delightful trip. I got to see Leslie Odom jnr reprise his role as the original Aaron Burr in the West End production of Hamilton. The tiny, windowless, budget hotel room I’d booked for my first night in London turned out to be a womb-like oasis of calm, its size necessitating just one light switch, which is a unicorn when it comes to modern hotel experiences. How much time is lost to doddering around rooms, which are either brighter than the surface of the sun or so dimly lit they’re hazardous, desperately searching for the one switch among dozens that might solve the situation?
The wedding was a triumph of music, food and style that even a heatwave couldn’t wilt. The bride was effortlessly chic in Simone Rocha and there was a tonka bean pavlova that I’ll think about until my dying days.
There was one more highlight of the trip. Not necessarily the highlight, but a personal, idiosyncratic win: I got to mildly scold someone for incorrect use of the overhead bin.
My Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Heathrow was laden with Americans travelling to connecting flights, which meant there was a higher than usual number of wheelie cabin suitcases carried on-board rather than checked into the hold.
I was in the final boarding group, and as I made my way down the aisle the cabin crew were beseeching passengers to put their personal items – coats and small bags – under the seat in front of them. As usual, there were those who simply could not countenance that such a request might apply to them.
As I headed towards the back of the plane to find my seat, I hit a snarl. Some of the passengers ahead of me were floundering, unable to find space for their wheelie suitcases. A young American man desperately tried to squeeze his case into an overhead bin beside me, and failed. I opened the one directly in front of me to try to help, and of course, sitting right there like two cow pats were a pair of backpacks, taking up vital wheelie suitcase real estate. Their owners remained blissfully unaware of the turmoil they were causing. A member of cabin crew, trapped six people deep at the back of the plane, asked me to remove the backpacks and ask the culprits to place them under the seats.
Well, I have never lickarsed harder. I just about managed to avoid a tut sneaking out, much as I would have loved to really lean into the scolding. I settled into my seat, thrilled with myself, and dutifully shoved my own backpack down on to the ground at my feet. The woman beside me was a fellow overhead bin purist, so we bonded over that.
All in all, a perfect weekend.