The Station I Shall Have Been Accustomed To

This post is courtesy of my boss, who has seen fit to pay for me to travel to Amsterdam Premium Economy, that I may turn up to the UKOLN Repository Workshop refreshed and productive.

I’m just about at Hong Kong, and I type this with my laptop plugged into the patricians-only powerport (which took me ten minutes to work out). My posterior is in garb plebeian enough to have startled my workmates—they are sore unaccustomed to seeing me in denim and a T-shirt, especially as my colleague Mark had gone the opposite direction and becravatted himself, our managers visiting. My Levis nonetheless are enthroned in a seat patrician enough to wiggle in. My arms rest against armrests patrician enough to fit the next guy’s elbows as well.

My feet are taking a rest from the footrest patrician enough to let me recline in style, and now perch on my computer bag plebeian enough to have had its handle break off for the fourth time. (The nail’s clean out of the fabric this time, I don’t see how I’m going to reattach it.) The computer bag is awkwardly propped against the seat leg in front of me, as Premium Economy seats are too patrician to welcome carryon luggage stowed underneath them.

I am digesting a patrician supper of lamb and a patrician breakfast of cereal. Well, the lamb still had the slight whiff of microwave, and cereal is still cereal even with a strawberry in it; but the accompaniment of tablecloths (OK, matcloths) and silverware is enough to elevate any microwaved confection to Versailles level of sophistication. Or at least Inner Suburbs.

My ears have delighted to complimentary headphones being noise-cancelling (ha!), with a very patrician triangular plug; lamentably they were more soundproof than I was Brahms-proof, so I’m now back to my iPod (with my plebeian noise-cancelling headphones and their compromised structural integrity), wondering whether purchasing that Telemann trumpet concerto was really a good use of my money.

In all, not at all a bad way to fly. My snap reaction, which startled me, was not as much gratitude that for once I could stretch out my legs, but impatience at all the times I couldn’t. Surely these are the minimum requirements for decent travel, surely they are my due. A sense of entitlement: who knew I had it in me.

Not that much of a surprise, really, given what my new house looks like. On which, next post or so. I’ve turned out quite the snob, really. Well, this isn’t my due, and this isn’t my entitlement, and I’ll take it while it’s on offer. And stretch some more.

Descent commenced; stowing laptop. More anon.