Britical

        Auckland, NZ

“I’m sure there will be lots of lovely things happening on the planes that day.” This bit of wisdom from my Mother when I bemoaned the fact of not only having to travel on Christmas Day, but even worse, have Boxing Day sucked into oblivion as I fly backwards over the International Dateline. Still, as it happened, she was not wrong. At the time I laughed in a special, skeptical way at her naivety and refrained from asking her nastily if perhaps she was referring to the Mile High Club, a cramped and badly lit experience at best and not in the good way clamouring non-members might envisage.

The first leg of the trip, JFK to the most unrelentingly dismal, willfully flourescent airport in the world, LAX, went off comfortably enough. Mind you, it is worth noting that Song (Delta’s bleating response to JetBlue) scared me a little when, approaching LAX, the pilot gave out the wrong time on the P.A. A minor infraction this, but realizing his mistake he giggled and the whole plane was treated to, “Oops! Did I say 5:55pm? I meant 4:55pm - gosh, I think I’m feeling a bit blond today!!” This was regrettable. Later, someone told me that Song employees are encouraged to “inject their own personalities” into the work environment. This is never a good idea and I am sorry both for them and for us. Unsurprising and gratifying then to hear that Delta is yanking Song and its overfamiliar no doubt show tune belting air hosts and hostesses out of business this March.

At check-in for Qantas (Rainman’s favourite), and having fretted and whined about the lengthy long haul horror for weeks, it was time to attempt my best, most shameless impression of some sort of terribly earnest, ever so nice and unassuming English person, a Brave Little Woman in the heroic style of perhaps Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver. “Oh goodness!” I whimpered, “Thirteen hours! Oooh, how bad is it exactly…?”

And so …. belted in for take-off two hours later, this is what I found next to me: not one, not two, not three but FOUR seats waiting all in a row and all to myself. As you like to say in England (in horrendous ungrammatical terms) - Result! Not only this but staff were quite perplexingly obliging. For instance, I was instructed to put on the light because one of them was worried about my eyesight reading in the dark like that, oh and would I like another blanket, an extra dessert? They could not do enough for me. Their ministrations became so absurd that I began to wonder if some kind friend with pull had called up the airline to ask them to keep an eye on the poor retarded girl in 23C, D, E and F.

“So these are MY seats, then?” I said to the air host guy. “Oh yiss, well you’ve got haalf an hour? Until the seat belt light gows off? And then it’s usually a fray for all.” Only in Australia, as it were. Ditto, I might add, their informing us over the P.A. to “Please resist the temptation to sleep on the floor.” Sad, sad. Apparently, unshockingly, it was going to be a long night. But not for me. As the seat belt sign dinged off, and ahead of my hapless, gimlet eyed competitors, I flipped up the armrests, and launched myself, goalkeeper-like, across my four wonderful seats. My seats. Ignoring the blatant loathing in the Paddington Hard Stares of the bad losers around me, upright and wretched in their tiny seats for the duration of the long haul horror ahead, I stretched out and laid decadently flat. And, sufficiently frontloaded with a handful of sleeping pills, I actually slept. Thirteen hours across the Pacific shrank to three. It was, as my Mother might say, “a lovely thing.”

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YACHTING. SOUTH PACIFIC.

December 29th, 2005
Auckland, NZ

Yachting. South Pacific. Yes, this is what I wanted to put on my e-mail vacation response. Pretentious? Moi? Sure, but part of the draw was the enticing brevity, the mysterious “Picnic. Lightning.” sound of it. Conveniently, of course, I had forgotten the precise context of this quote, and remembering, decided that perhaps better not to fall overboard and have it said (nay, sobbed of course. At my funeral.) that I’d unwittingly plagiarized my own epitaph while crowing about my vacation.

Certain yacht death by plagiarism averted, I arrived in New Zealand on the red eye the day before yesterday for a week of decadent sounding sailing around the East coast of the North Island, the Bay of Islands and elsewhere (don’t ask where else, I have no idea!). My friend JJO, a globetrotting, stoicly demeanoured (read: ever so Manly) Kiwi currently up to who knows what in gold rush Beijing, has ordered a bunch of us to fly in from all points of the globe for a New Year’s adventure on ‘Lion New Zealand’. Twenty two of us in total, it should be a veritable U.N. convention (without the corruption, ineptitude, Mercedeses). I have barely sailed before but Jf. slipped me a trusty sailing handbook before I left New York into which I have delved furtively since I got here (I’m aware that sentence sounds suggestive in some icky way but it’s staying. Apologies.) I have no intention of being thorough, of course. I want just enough yachty tedium to allow me to bandy around silly words like “boom vang” as casually as possible, thus shutting up those “helpful” sorts - and believe me there always are some - who would attempt to educate me in some plodding fashion as opposed to, say, fetching my next fucking drink.

I know almost no one here, a situation I enjoy. I am banking on some interesting company, not least of all two impressively credentialed sailing friends of JJO’s, Ollie and Janot, who will be joining us on the 81 foot ‘Lion New Zealand’. I am told they can “sail, build, race, or fix any vessel anywhere under any conditions”. For them, however, this could prove to be a far more complicated voyage than for me, although for infinitely more interesting reasons: Lion’s previous owner was Sir Peter Blake. Although shamefully unfamiliar with Blake ( in NZ and elsewhere, he and ‘Lion’ are apparently legendary and much revered) I am shocked to learn that these two men were, five years ago, on an environmental expedition on the Atlantic Coastal regions of the Amazon when Blake and his vessel ‘Seamaster’ were attacked by - of all things - pirates. Blake was shot and killed. Ollie and Janot, filming miles upriver at the time, were helpless to protect him. This trip for them is surely a poignant one, and I imagine them to be craggy and taciturn and unfathomably tragic-seeming. Nevertheless, I resolve to pester these two about what I can’t help thinking of, indelicately, as the pirate adventure, although I shall try to do in some decorous, infinitely tactful way - or close imitation of such.

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PLANES, TANKS & AUTOMOBILES

Apparently, yesterday was so overwhelming that I went into some sort of hyterical amnesia and quite forgot to tell you about the most stupendous and bizarre private estate I have ever visited.

Ten of us bundled into two little cars, we left Auckland and headed North West into the countryside, as far as we knew to pay a visit to E., a great friend of JJO’s. Tired, jetlaggy in that way where light, any light, feels too bright and jarring, I stared out of the car window at the ubiquitious landscape of scrubby rolling hills and sheep and more sheep, the latter little white shapes flecking the green so it’s easy to imagine you’re surrounded by messy and ill-kempt cemeteries. I am also still trying to shake the absurd (I know) childish notion that we’re all walking… upside down! True. This the result of too many days when I was little spent at the chilly English beach when my poor harassed Mother, desperate for a bit of peace and quiet, would as cheerily as possible, encourage us kids to “dig a hole and you might get to Australia!”

The requisite huge electronic gates greet us, entrance to the G_____ “farm” (as it is officially called). Numbers are punched in and we glide into what must be acres and acres of rolling hills swarming with the ubiquitous sheep, but dotted here and there with all sorts of sculptures. We are soon quite lost, unable to find E.’s house (one of several on the family estate) and embarrasingly we have to call her for back-up. We eventually find the place, although I suspect stumble upon is more like it. Half an hour later and we’re chatting with with E., a lovely, fuschia-haired scientist, as we charge along in one of those huge, famously fuel efficient black Hummer H2’s. She barrels us across the hills, past water buffalo, the bigggest Richard Serra in the whole world (a good few minutes to actually drive past the thing), and, unexpectedly, on to visit a little Western town her father built for himself, purely for his own amusement, in a valley somewhere among the acres and acres. “Oh,” she says, ” and the giraffes should be arriving next week!” But of course.

We make a quick detour to check out an enormous garage (yes, everything here huge, big, enormous…I am running out of words). It’s full of the fast cars you’d expect, but also a couple of the amphibian cars AG (Emma’s Dad) himself invented and attempted to “sail” across the Atlantic, plus an assortment of very nice… tanks. I was informed, sotto voce, by JJO, that one day, finding himself bored perhaps and at a loss, E.’s Dad purchased a job lot of old cars, piled them hither and thither around the estate, then flew an F16, MIG-29 or some such jetfighter overhead - and bombed them to pieces. Ka-boom! Take dat! The idle rich, indeed - but I can’t say I wasn’t envious. At just this moment, a helicopter (nay, an actual black helicopter, for those conspiracy paranoids among you) suddenly flew loud and low overhead, and banked steeply, veering away and disappearing over the rise ahead of us. “Oh”, said E., breezily, “that must be my husband.”

And so on to the local Western town. It is one of those typical long main streets you see in westerns or Hollywood lots - but it’s quite authentic-looking, with actual saloons, whorehouses, etc., as opposed to mere facades where you enter a building and find yourself instantly outside again. We step into a dim, appropriately boozy smelling wood panelled bar where we all get to sit up on stools made from big saddles and drink shots from bottles with the name of the fake saloon pasted brazenly on the front. This is great fun, of course, but the whole set-up makes me slightly uneasy, the perfection ominous in a Westworld kind of way. Outside, tied to hitching posts, large plastic horses wait patiently in the sunlight.

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COFFEE AND A FISH

Dec. 30th, 2005
Russell, NZ

Yesterday we set sail at last, although not before Libby, Theo and I grabbed, with some unnecessary urgency, what we thought might be our Last Real Cup of Coffee. We had taken a quick peek at the quarters below deck, you see, and realized the full potential of the word “primitive”. Silently aghast, we legged it across the dock to the nearest shop selling fish, fish and more fish but also, in the far corner - coffee. (And fabulous coffee it is too: New Zealand has hands down and consistently the best coffee I have ever tasted anywhere ever! This is mysterious, since they seem to traffic only in sheep and guys who are far less cute than you might imagine.) Said a bemused Theo, “Well, for when you want coffee and a fish, I suppose” And why not? Grateful, we hurried back and just in time too, or so we dramatically told ourselves as we wobbled self-consciously with our shameful cups of coffee up the gangplank and leapt inexpertly on board under the pitying gaze of the other more professional crewmembers.

Up on deck with the hot sun blazing down and the clouds seeming to race to keep up above us, with the sound of the sea sloshing against the sides of the boat as it cuts through the water, looking upwards squinty-eyed at the white, white sails and I think to myself, this is exactly like that Duran Duran video. Awesome!

Below deck is a less glamourous matter. What gives ‘Lion’ her speed is, partly, her 18 foot width, so quarters are fairly, uh, “intimate”. There are about twenty of us all to be sleeping along the walls perched on netting sling bunks, stacked in close threes with barely room to raise your head when lying flat. Put out your arm and your fingers will find the stove, the table, someone’s bare ass as they awkwardly try and get dressed. There is no privacy. Two heads (toilets), even tinier than those you’d find on a plane, are the only separate “rooms” on board and so everyone will be conducting everything in front of everyone else at all times. Dressing, eating, arguing, snoring, sex…. someone will always be watching or listening. I imagine things ending up like a bad but morbidly compelling “reality TV” show - and, with the caffeine kicking in, feel heartened and keen to pull anchor.

 

 

Copyright Britical 2005