Sublime to ridiculous
What to do when travel plans descend into the absurd? Enjoy, says Owen Scott
It had been a long time since I had flown long-haul on Air New Zealand. I was curious to experience the much-vaunted reputation of the national airline. A flight from Auckland to London, via Shanghai, provided the opportunity. There were amusing incidents along the way. All started well. Seats were comfortable, the crew friendly. After a couple of wines I even contemplated watching Planet of the Apes 103 on the fancy entertainment system. (The diet on planes these days seems to be a rash of sequels and prequels). Anyway, I thought this flight was not going to be too bad after all . . . until the symptoms of a pre-existing condition were triggered an hour or so into the flight.
The Service Director was describing various aspects of service in a Flight of the Conchordslaconic sort of manner with liberal use of “awardwinning”. He described what delicacies were going to be served in cattle class during the course of the flight and signed off with one fatal word that had me scrabbling for an oxygen mask. “Enjoy.” The effect was like a strobe to an epileptic. “Enjoy” is an imperative, a command. I don’t want to be told what to do, however palatable the nosh. In cafes and restaurants I’ve been known to reply to “Imperitors” with “I might”. Why has this ugly Americanism achieved such currency? It’s lazy and smug.
Ironically, in NZ, there’s a rather sweet anomaly with its use; the antipodean upward inflexion turns the command into a question, shyly neutering the imperative! Marvellous.
Back to the flight. I stowed my oxygen mask, self-medicated with more award-winning New Zealand wine and caught a few zzzs.
Touching down in Mainland China for the first time ever, I was curious and a little apprehensive about how officialdom might manifest itself. Would there be an array of uniforms, firearms and severity in the way passengers were marshalled and herded? Reality was rather sweet, more in the mode of Fawlty Towers. In Auckland, I’d already been issued with a boarding pass for the second leg of the flight to London. I discovered in Pudong that boarding pass counted for zilch. As I made my way along a very long concourse, I sensed at a certain point that I should join a queue to check in with officialdom. There was no instruction. I just happened to recognise a couple of passengers from my flight, so I joined them. There were also a couple of others from the flight not joining the queue, merely hovering. It was all a bit freeform. Eventually, my boarding pass was exchanged for one with many more stamps and official scribblings. The woman behind the counter then mumbled something about a “body temperature check”. I was a bit lame and using a stick after a recent foot operation, but thought my body temperature was pretty normal. Although, I could see the potential for it to rise.
Eventually, the queueing passengers — together with the “hoverers” — were rounded up like sheep by an energetic official calling out, “temperature, temperature, wait here!” I thought he might like to take the test too. The flock was then propelled down an escalator to the floor below. The escalator, of course, was not moving, not ideal for someone with a stick. I held people up. On the floor below the increasingly harried official separated us into two groups. There’s always something slightly disturbing about someone in uniform saying, “You stand there, but you come over here”. I am one of those sad specimens who has only to see a policeman for me to hold out my hands and blurt, “I did it”.
The process of separation in this case was between those who had new boarding passes and those who didn’t — the “hoverers”, who quite reasonably thought they already had a valid pass. The official, by now, was scurrying and circling like a teenaged Jack Russell on sugar, firing off random instructions, confusing everyone (including himself). At first, the old boarding pass group was told to return to the floor above to switch documents, and the rest of us to stay put. The official whizzed around as if terrified one of his sheep was about to bolt off into the illicit environs of this vast airport and commit some mammoth atrocity, resulting in said official receiving unspeakably painful retribution for his incompetence.
Finally, controlling two groups proved too much and with a deflated shrug the exhausted official ordered the entire flock to negotiate the non-moving escalator to our starting point, where we were directed to yet another official standing by a table. One by one, he looked suspiciously at our faces and our boarding passes before waving us through a door to “freedom”. Freedom was the more familiar and traditional security search, prior to boarding a plane to London. Not a thermometer in sight!
Would there be an array of uniforms, firearms and severity in the way passengers were marshalled and herded? Reality was rather sweet, more in the mode of Fawlty Towers