Toothbrushes, taxis and terminals (From Dorset Echo)

Toothbrushes, taxis and terminals

2:23pm Monday 6th October 2008

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I spend five perfect blissful days in Paris and I have much to tell about it, but the Beard says I am so far behind on the blog I must move on and because I love it when he is masterful, I will.

The flight to Madrid proves a bit of a logistical challenge. It leaves at silly o'clock and the journey to the airport requires a bus and then a coach. Amazing myself with my technical wizardry I actually manage to find the alarm function on my phone and set it too. I set it for 4 am and hope Madrid is going to be worth it. I am chatting until midnight so when the alarm goes off I am firmly in the land of dreaming I am kissing Robert De Niro.

I spend half an hour ironing my clothes and choosing from my wardrobe, I wish - in reality, I pick up the crumpled jogging bottoms from the floor that I have been wearing for three days, put them on and loathe them just a little bit more than yesterday. I strap my watch on and feel a certain fuzzy discomfort that takes a while to register. There is some twisted law of the universe that compels every plan I make to come monumentally and tortuously unstuck, my watch says the time is 5 am. I realise with the a familiar sinking feeling that has accompanied me most of my life that I had forgotten to put the time forward on my mobile phone clock.

I am an hour behind and the coach which a bus ride away leaves in 15 minutes. This kind of thing happens to me so often that I am pretty much immune from making the responses normal people make in this kind of situation, e.g. cursing and punching the wall or bursting into tears, well the truth is what I normally do is get pissy with the Beard, but he’s not here. It will take me a few minutes to work out how this is unquestionably his fault, but for now it’s all on me. So regardless of the peril or potential complete cock up stacking situation this is, I prioritise dental hygiene and go and clean my teeth.

The effect of cold water on my face jolts what remains of my brain into unusual lucidity and I realise that if I am to stand any hope of getting my flight to Madrid I must get that coach. So I have to leave now and get a taxi to the coach stop. I pick up my pack and hurtle to the roadside. The first three taxis ignore me {must be the toothbrush sticking out of my mouth} The fourth I ask, “porte maillot?” my destination, he looks disgusted but says “allez y” I get in panting and sweating and he locks the doors with an ominous clunk. This makes me sweat just a little more as memories of my most recent car journey in Paris come flooding back.

When we arrive at Porte Maillot a coach is waiting “airoport?” I ask the driver, hoping this isn’t a day trip to Versailles, ”oui” he replies and nods for me to put my pack in the luggage hold. I have bought a return ticket to the airport but I don’t think it is with this coach company. I have used up all my cash paying the taxi driver. I hold my breath as I hand the coach driver my ticket, expecting him to reject it, he takes it without question, and I am on.

I cannot tell you how much I loathe Madrid airport. I feel the kind of bubbling dangerous venomous passion that should only be reserved for child killers and those that put their seat back on a flight during the day, but hey, I never claimed to be normal. The signs for the exit must surely have been designed by someone in part time retirement whos former job was devising methods of torture during the war.

Miles and miles I walked and then I walked the same miles again but coming from another direction. Smoking in the building is apparently not illegal like in the rest of Europe but positively encouraged. They provide smokers with special rooms “zona fumedors” equipped with huge fans that blow the noxious migraine inducing lung petrifying fumes out for all other passengers to enjoy and die from. So many people were crammed into these rooms I think smoking must be encouraged with tax benefits or something.

“Can I check your passport Signora?“ Oh no such quaint customs such as that here. No, all escaped bank robbers and terrorists welcome here. Well, I thought, at least I’ve got one which they can use to identify my body after I have spent the rest of my life trying to find the way out and have eventually grown old and died in the attempt.

After the battle of the Bois de Boulogne I have come to Madrid a little better equipped than I was in Paris. Well in someways I am better equipped in that I have the name address and map showing the location of a campsite, on the other hand I don't have a reservation, don't know how to get there and don't speak a word of the language. This lack of ability to communicate troubles me greatly. However I comfort myself with the knowledge that “chocolate“ is an international word so at least I won’t starve.