Well that was quite a night. Quite a trip.
Sitting here, this early afternoon, in a Dublin bar it seems hard to believe that last night was a drama. Like most other dramas in which I’ve been involved, the minute’s it’s over I revert back to my state of reasonableness and calm.
When you consider quitting a trip before it’s started, almost get in a punch up on the plane and then arrive at The Hotel California you feel as if the whole trip has a black cloud over it. But a good night’s sleep, a bite to eat and a cup of coffee solves every problem and puts things nicely into perspective. Now I can look forwards to the game.
So what was so mad about last night, and why did it fly off the rails almost as soon as it began? Why is this not an article about the game and how much I enjoyed my morning in Dublin? (And I have; just standing in front of the GPO was humbling and kind of awesome.) Well, the short answer is this; when you go on a trip like this you’re better booking it yourself.
Every time I travel, I arrange things with almost military precision. I know every detail of the trip before I set off. This time one of our guys organised it, and so we’ve all had a laugh giving him stick over his arrangements, which to be fair are unique to this trip. (I’ll book myself next time though just in case.) Anyway … that was part of the problem.
For openers, when we arrived at the airport and asked some initial questions I was disquieted by the answers. Getting to the RyanAir desk to find out that our failure to check-in online was going to cost us £55 each – a scandal about which we all intend to do a lot of complaining – got us off to the worst possible start.
At that point, I was going home.
I flatly refused to pay that, and had no intention of doing so. I was already slightly puzzled by the trip arrangement details I was aware of – leaving at quarter past eleven to spend a needless night in a hotel, which didn’t sound like such an appealing location even before I saw it – and so I was perfectly ready to head back up the road.
But our organiser paid for the overage, and has vowed to get it back from the travel company who hadn’t sent him the full details of the package on time. I wish him luck on that. He should send them pictures of our accommodation to strengthen his case.
Anyway, before getting to the flight let me give you some background. I’m not feeling particularly good at the moment and haven’t been for several weeks if not months. I suspect I have a bad allergy which I really should get properly checked out.
This week past I think I’ve had the flu on top of it, and so I was already feeling pretty wretched, and I needed that £55 ransom demand like a hole in the head. So sitting in the airport bar with a beer, I was already not in the best mood.
The wait to board the flight was reasonably tense as well, as RyanAir’s strict rules on what baggage you’re allowed on looked likely to put me on another collision course with them; that was averted, mercifully, or I absolutely would have abandoned the trip and chucked it. The shape of things to come was evident for having to step around and over someone’s vomit whilst walking from the departure desk to the plane.
Once on the plane, there was a mix-up over the seats. I was pretty sure I was in the right row (if not the right chair) and so I couldn’t understand it when a guy turned up with his girlfriend, insisted our party were in the wrong seats and I got up and went looking for my boarding pass to double check it. And I couldn’t find the boarding pass. Or my passport.
I already felt like the trip was pretty chaotic. It was way busy on that flight, a lot of the people on it were pretty drunk and loud, and I was standing there in the middle of the isle going through bags and pockets and asking people to look on the floor … I don’t travel light, and so I am always carrying way more than anyone else, including the notebook I’m writing this on, so I was a mess of cables, battery packs, headphones, chargers and other stuff.
And by then I thought I better go up front and talk to the staff. So already, on a crowded flight just minutes from take-off, things are an absolute mess. The staff did what they were able to do, asked the desk staff to double check the area, the ground staff if anything had been handed in on the route and they offered assurances that it would all get sorted on the other side. In Dublin. Where at that point I thought I might be landing without a passport.
So whilst I was standing there, trying to stay calm, trying to keep myself together, when I was feeling shitty, and already not in the best mood, someone then decided to give me stick for holding the flight up (which actually, I wasn’t, as half the people on the flight were still stumbling about and trying to find seats or trying to use the bathroom.)
Even at the best of times it isn’t a genius level idea for someone to get in my face … still, when you’re on an airplane and your temper flares up to the point where you’re ask someone if they want to have a go and you give them a little dunt just to emphasise the point, that’s probably when you’re going too far.
And because even in that frame of mind there’s always part of me that knows when I’m losing it, that was actually the moment when I did feel that I was calming down again, and able to think rationally for a minute. I
know I’m a careless sod at times – on a trip to London last year I left my wallet in the airport, did the same in Madrid and on my recent holiday to Tenerife I actually left my passport on the table in the office where I was getting my paperwork for my transfer from the airport to the hotel and didn’t even know I had until the girl from the office turned up on my coach minutes before it departed to give it back to me – but it was hard to believe I had lost it between the final check, where you have to show it with your boarding pass, and getting onto the plane.
So one last time, I took down my holdall, and my laptop bag, and went through them, this time calmly, this time carefully, and this time with the thoroughness you don’t ever do when you’re in the initial “OMG WHERE IS IT?” freak-out when you think you’ve lost something.
And at the bottom of my laptop bag, jammed right in there underneath some long forgotten paperwork, was the boarding pass and the passport … where I must have put them when I got my laptop out to put together the first part of this diary, before being told I was in the wrong seat.
And of course, I’d been in the right row all along; it was my old man who was in the wrong row and the wrong seat. That problem resolved, and feeling immense relief, I repacked my stuff, stuck it all in the overhead compartment (save the laptop) and got comfy in my seat. Not that we took off right away; the whole plane remained in a state of semi-chaos and we were more than a full half hour late in getting in the air. The flight was mercifully short … but long all the same. Drunken people singing and shouting and banging on windows is always a drag to sit through, even when they are Celtic fans and even when you are in a reasonable frame of mind.
Still, I exchanged some friendly words with the guy I’d wanted to fight with, shook his hand, got myself chilled and wrote 500 words whilst we were in the air. The landing and leaving the plane went smoothly enough and we got our taxi after a bit of confusion over the Zone we were getting picked up in, but without any real difficulty.
And then we arrived at our digs. Oh dear God. My house has just finished watching Love/Hate (me for the second time all the way through) and I had harboured some hopes of seeing some of the locations around the city centre from the show.
I didn’t expect to be staying somewhere even Ado would have turned his nose up at. If a Nidgy type had popped in to collect his rent from the resident hookers using the gaff I would not have been terribly surprised. I realise I should offer some context to the people who have never seen the show, so here goes; we were staying above a takeaway, through a secure entry door which looked as if it led to a condemned structure, walked in to be greeted by two guys we knew from Glasgow who had already been there a night and thoroughly condemned the place … and then I noticed that they had a vending machine which stocked half bottles of booze.
Malibu, whiskey and Mars Bars, in a vending machine.
Do I need to go any further in describing the place?
No, but I will anyway; a dozen rooms, over five floors, sharing one bathroom one floor under ours, all four of us in the same room, with two sets of bunk-beds and a pull down. I had not expected a wrapped After Eight on my pillow … but man oh man. I have stayed in student digs on trips which were vastly better than the place I spent last night.
So that was the journey and that was last night.
It’s game time today, and after a nice breakfast in a nice place – The Wooden Whisk, just off O’Connell Street, I heartily recommend it – and that wonderful but short visit to the GPO, I’m finally completely chilled out and enjoying myself. This will turn out to be well worth the trip, I think, as the people are great, the company is good and the beer is very fine indeed. I may even write about the football next.
Enjoy yourselves guys and gals wherever you may be. To those who’re in Dublin, enjoy the city as much as I intend to. Already I love this place, with all its history. This is my first time here. It will certainly not be the last.
But next time, yeah, I’m booking it myself.