Kerri and Me
Feb. 11th, 2006 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringEvery now and then Kerri flies to Sydney or Melbourne for a day's meeting. She hires a room at the Qantas Club at the domestic terminal and folk from all over OZ fly in, discuss stuff and then go home again.
This usually means she has to get up early and I drop her off at the airport at about seven, and she calls me when she wants to be picked up around five or six, depending on flights.
So Friday, I set the alarm for six and she gets up, gets prettified, has a quick breakfast and browse of the paper, while I make a cuppa and check my email.
Ten to seven I haul her briefcase out to the car, she gets in and we go out to the airport. I's only a couple of kilometres away, but there's half a dozen roundabouts on the way. Anyone flying in is going to think Canberra is the city of roundabouts on the way to their hotel. And they aren't too far wrong.
Anyway, I drop her off at the kerb outside Departures. The checkin desks are only ten metres away or something, Canberra isn't what you'd call a huge airport. As we kiss, a spark of static jumps between our lips, as it so often does in the car - we sort of approach nervously like teenagers instead of old marriedies - and then we jump a bit and smile at each other. She gets her briefcase, waves and goodbye.
I pull out and I've got one eye on the glimpses of runway just in case something interesting pulls in, but no, and as I get out and am negotiating the first roundabout I realise that I've still got my phone in my pocket. Yes, we share a mobile phone. It's the one she'll need to call me to be picked up. Blast. So I get to the next roundabout, do a 180 and head back. Get a good park just across from the entrance and head inside.
Now, at this point you've got to realise that while Kerri is going to a business meeting in Sydney, my part in the transaction is to roll out of bed, drive her to the airport and go back home. So I'm wearing slip on sandals, my comfy old round the house shorts (and my concession to the outside world is that I'm wearing undies as well), the polo shirt I've slept in (an old geeky thing that's covered in fluff and cat hair showing up in brilliant highlight against the black), I haven't shaved and my hair is unbrushed and unloved.
I'm hoping she's in the checkin lines, but no, the place is all but deserted. So I head to the security gates to go for the lounge upstairs. The lady at the far end takes one look at me and motions me aside for the explosives sniffer.
Upstairs she's not visible in the gate area, so she must be inside the Qantas Club. I go to the young women on the counter, smile unshavenly at them, hoping they'll ignore the trail of cinnamon-coloured cat hairs I'm leaving on their nice carpet, and ask if i can give my wife her mobile phone. They check a list and say that's OK.
Now, I'm looking like I've just rolled out of bed, and all around me are people dressed up to the nines in immaculate business suits and the like. Honestly, I'm the only person in the premises with sandals. I have to walk all the way through before I find Kerri, and my heart soars when i see her. There she is, immaculately dressed, perfectly co-ordinated, sipping from a fresh cappuccino and browsing the morning paper.
"Your phone, dear!", I say, pulling it out of my pocket.
She looks up at me and smiles, "I'm surprised they let you in!" she says.
She can read my mind!
This usually means she has to get up early and I drop her off at the airport at about seven, and she calls me when she wants to be picked up around five or six, depending on flights.
So Friday, I set the alarm for six and she gets up, gets prettified, has a quick breakfast and browse of the paper, while I make a cuppa and check my email.
Ten to seven I haul her briefcase out to the car, she gets in and we go out to the airport. I's only a couple of kilometres away, but there's half a dozen roundabouts on the way. Anyone flying in is going to think Canberra is the city of roundabouts on the way to their hotel. And they aren't too far wrong.
Anyway, I drop her off at the kerb outside Departures. The checkin desks are only ten metres away or something, Canberra isn't what you'd call a huge airport. As we kiss, a spark of static jumps between our lips, as it so often does in the car - we sort of approach nervously like teenagers instead of old marriedies - and then we jump a bit and smile at each other. She gets her briefcase, waves and goodbye.
I pull out and I've got one eye on the glimpses of runway just in case something interesting pulls in, but no, and as I get out and am negotiating the first roundabout I realise that I've still got my phone in my pocket. Yes, we share a mobile phone. It's the one she'll need to call me to be picked up. Blast. So I get to the next roundabout, do a 180 and head back. Get a good park just across from the entrance and head inside.
Now, at this point you've got to realise that while Kerri is going to a business meeting in Sydney, my part in the transaction is to roll out of bed, drive her to the airport and go back home. So I'm wearing slip on sandals, my comfy old round the house shorts (and my concession to the outside world is that I'm wearing undies as well), the polo shirt I've slept in (an old geeky thing that's covered in fluff and cat hair showing up in brilliant highlight against the black), I haven't shaved and my hair is unbrushed and unloved.
I'm hoping she's in the checkin lines, but no, the place is all but deserted. So I head to the security gates to go for the lounge upstairs. The lady at the far end takes one look at me and motions me aside for the explosives sniffer.
Upstairs she's not visible in the gate area, so she must be inside the Qantas Club. I go to the young women on the counter, smile unshavenly at them, hoping they'll ignore the trail of cinnamon-coloured cat hairs I'm leaving on their nice carpet, and ask if i can give my wife her mobile phone. They check a list and say that's OK.
Now, I'm looking like I've just rolled out of bed, and all around me are people dressed up to the nines in immaculate business suits and the like. Honestly, I'm the only person in the premises with sandals. I have to walk all the way through before I find Kerri, and my heart soars when i see her. There she is, immaculately dressed, perfectly co-ordinated, sipping from a fresh cappuccino and browsing the morning paper.
"Your phone, dear!", I say, pulling it out of my pocket.
She looks up at me and smiles, "I'm surprised they let you in!" she says.
She can read my mind!
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 02:20 pm (UTC)Me, too! Not because of the way you looked, though. If I read that right, you got through security without a boarding pass!!!!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 06:58 pm (UTC)Canberra doesn't do international at the moment, and even when we did it was a thrice weekly flight to Fiji or some other rubbish.
Not that there is no terminal security, mind. I hear stories of the bad old days at LAX where gangs would come in and shakedown the unarmed passengers. That sort of thing doesn't happen in Oz.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 05:16 pm (UTC)At least you weren't wearing stripey pajamas, flannel dressing gown and carpet slippers - that would have been funnier still!!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-12 06:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 05:39 pm (UTC)However, if at 2 am, when I've had a cold, and haven't bathed, and my hair is stringy, my breath is bad, my complexion is sallow, and I need another can of soup or something, the scenario is always different. I will pull on some holey, rumpled, coffee-stained sweatpants and attempt to sneak up to the corner shop in the dead of night, just to get a quick necessity. Invariably there will be some colleague of my husband's, or some aquaintance from school who hasn't seen me in years, puttering around the store and greeting me cheerily. I am certain they go back home and say, "You'll never guess who I ran into last night! Goodness, she's certainly gone to pot!"
no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 07:01 pm (UTC)I don't believe you for a moment! You don't need to wear anything to look gorgeous. No, hang on, let me rephrase that. You'd look gorgeous in anything!
Though I must say that I'm hoping I'll catch at least a glimpse of you in pirate coat!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 07:08 pm (UTC)The best part, she told me later, was that she was travelling with a colleague, who had chosen this moment to get up and sort out an errand and so she didn't have to introduce Mr Scruffy.
Unlike the time in Rosslyn where we were checking out of the hotel and I was in my normal comfy travel clothes of old green shoes, cargo pants and Microsoft-branded polo shirt and she had to introduce me to the Italian delegate who was checking out at the same time and apparently travels around in the most elegant suit you can imagine, with manners to suit.
I'm trying to improve my image, I really am, but when my day involves a transcontinental flight followed by fourteen hours over the Pacific, I'm aiming for comfort and convenience rather than looks.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-12 12:05 am (UTC)We used to this all the time at hotels that the army put us up in when we were moving: 5 star corporate type places. Mum and Dad usually looked fairly decent - the 5 kids didn't. THat didn't stop us from enjoying the facilities.
Well done you!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-12 12:16 am (UTC)I have been caught too