Taking Flight
Absolute madness and only myself to blame. Guilt about a certain jam doughnut propelled me into the gym late last night where I worked up a sweat just running the gauntlet of sarcastic remarks from one of the instructors.
"Hello stranger....long time no see....I know the face, forgotten the name.." etc etc.
I strapped on my heart monitor and launched myself on to the treadmill, the cycling machine and that contraption that makes you feel like you're trudging through a snowdrift. Not all at the same time, you understand. Then home for what was meant to be a good night's rest prior to me catching the early flight from Inverness to Gatwick.
But then I started reading The Bullet Trick and it was one o'clock in the morning before I knew it. The alarm went off four hours later and I stumbled into the shower trying to figure out why my legs felt like they were strapped to a couple of tree trunks. Oh yes...the gym.
Even the airport car park seemed to be conspiring against me. In the pre-dawn gloom I could clearly see dozens of empty spaces, but the screen at the entrance barrier proclaimed, and I quote, "the car park is filled up."
This is the way my children described things when they were in nursery school.
"The paddling pool is all filled up, daddy!"
No matter how many times I pressed the button for a ticket, the screen message remained the same and barrier wouldn't rise. Not even when I started shouting at it.
I reversed out and went in search of the alternative "long-stay" car park which, I can tell you, is so far away from the terminal building that I might as well have parked at home. It might have been in Perth.
And now I sit in the wireless broadband zone at Gatwick, trying to remember the important points from my various London meetings and wondering if I should buy a compass in the tax-free shop so that I can find my car when I get to Inverness.
Oh the glamour of it all. And my legs still hurt.
