Homeward Bound

Tomorrow I head back to the UK.

I have been trying to put into words for days the nonsensical tangled mess that is the train of thought in my head. And finding all manner of distractions to avoid it at the same time.

When my boyfriend left for New Zealand in April, it ended three months of saying goodbye and the closing of a year of not knowing and of endless reams of inconclusive conversations on our future. We had two choices that weren’t our choices at all but someone else’s: He would be sent to New Zealand to start eighteen months of training, or he wouldn’t.

We spun endless stories of an alternative life, of a house and a mortgage and a dog. We put so much into making it not a plan B, just an alternative plan A, so that it would never be a failure or a fall back but simply different from the first plan.

We talked about that plan, that alternative path the other day. What if-

I always knew this was the right plan though, if he got the opportunity. The hardest route for me but the only solution. Not that it would have been the only solution, of course, if we hadn’t been given that option. But hindsight is a wonderful thing and can be blissfully hypocritical without any repercussions.

He has just left for the airport and I am alone again.

I have got so used to these goodbyes where he goes out for the day and I occupy myself, reading, writing, webbing, exploring. I have got used to him coming back on an evening. I have got used to the little things: making him a cup of tea, making his sandwiches, cooking him dinner. Somewhere near domestic bliss while having to share a kitchen with a dozen or so other trainees, fighting through the testosterone fuelled air. I have got used to seeing him when I wake up in the morning and when I go to sleep at night. I have got used to waking up in the night and not trying to coax myself back to sleep in the fierce way I have been familiar with since he’s been gone. It isn’t wasted time: he’s there.

Up until last Thursday, the days were passing fluidly, I was busy, my mind was occupied with productivity and I was using time the best way I could. The day he left I promised myself I wouldn’t wish this time away, I wouldn’t want him home, I wouldn’t want me there, only in the time it should be. I needed to harness this time and make it mine, control it so I knew this was my life and when he came home he would be a pilot and I would have achieved; I would have stories to tell too.

We had a meal planned, our first after days of him working through the evening and flying in the early hours of the following morning. Friday, though, he didn’t have a flight. We’d decided to go out and sample/endure the local nightlife of the neighbouring town (which I think may actually be a city, but as the esteemed title of ‘township’ is bestowed on housing colonies of just 4 upwards, the Kiwis seem to work on a slightly different scale to us).

I was extremely excited. But my boyfriend returned for the airport just as the news of the terror plans broke on New Zealand television – the early hours of the UK’s Thursday morning. And then everything changed.

As the partner of a future pilot, it has been pretty hard to avoid all things air-transport related over the last year. I know a lot more than I would like, but understand even less. I have caught parts of numerous disaster and ‘airport life’ documentaries than I ever wanted to. And in less than a week I was to be heading back to the UK – on a plane. So this news, despite being half way around the other side of the world, was not going to be forced out of my mind lightly.

From that moment on things changed. The mostly confused and occasionally wildly inaccurate news filtered from the UK and out of the mouths of the Kiwi news presenters leaving a somewhat fragmented picture.

When we heard the news, when it begun to sink in, I can’t describe the series of emotions I endured. There were thousands of people in a desperate situation all over the world, stranded or trying to get to their loved ones or facing boarding a plane with children and nothing to entertain them with. But all I could think about was going home – how I would face the 26 hour journey, having said goodbye to my boyfriend, with nothing.

Looking back, I dealt with the whole thing terribly. My boyfriend and my parents endured a lot of attempting-to-calm-me conversations. Conversations of the future of his career, the future of the airline industry, the threat of future attacks, the attacks that were prevented filtered through us again and again until they became over discussed and exhausted and then the news would change again and another fire would be lit and another dialogue fuelled.

And with every conversation I was reminded constantly that I was going home.

The situation is now improving in the UK. I have had excited text messages from my family every time another piece of hand luggage news has been unveiled. Things are as back to normal as is humanly possible in such a short space of time.

Not, it seems, for Air New Zealand however.

Prior to the hand luggage restrictions being relaxed on Tuesday in the UK, I had phoned Air New Zealand to discover what the score was this side of the world. See through plastic bags all round, although I was extremely excited to find they were permitting me to take a book, ear plugs and an eye mask, so things would at least be bearable.

But on finding out about the news in the UK, I excitedly called Air New Zealand, to ensure that I could, indeed, take my trusty backpack on board in hand luggage.

The woman that I spoke to obviously had so far not encountered a customer inquiring over such matters, or at least had not been able to solve their query effectively. She shuffled off to find her manager, leaving me on hold listening to the wonders of first class travel with Air New Zealand (apparently they have a relaxing Ottoman and a comfortable bed), and returned reading off a piece of paper that said that they were still opting for the unstylish and disruptive see through plastic bag with minimal accessories (none of which were electrical) route, rather than the more desirable laptop bag one that BAA were opting for.

She told me that these instructions she was reeling off were the same as for the UK. I battled with her furiously that they were not and that I was reading the information off the BAA’s website, but fact was obviously not going to penetrate her rather scratchy self and, after a rather heated debate, I recoiled. She then told me we were allowed to check in two pieces of luggage at 23kg, instead of the 27kg limit for one bag a previous employee had told me (she mocked me when I told her this and said ‘we’ve NEVER allowed such a limit! 27! Never!’).

I hung up the phone feeling deflated and promptly burst into tears so that my boyfriend had great difficulty in deriving what on earth had happened through my overblown sobs. I called my dad in search of a ‘DadSolutionTM’ and he duly provided one which didn’t have me wailing ‘no that won’t work because’.

As packing my laptop in my soft suitcase is probably a bad idea as putting a china dog inside and expecting it to arrive in one piece or attempting to claim on the shattered objects through the insurance company, my laptop wasn’t going in the hold without some serious TLC and, possibly, an armour plated cover just to make sure. So instead I am fashioning some sort of solution with a combination of bags, one of which is to be purchased at The Warehouse (‘where everyone gets a bargain’ so here’s hoping) tonight.

This is going to severely piss me off tomorrow if I turn up, plastic bag in one hand, embedded laptop in the other, to find that everyone else is merrily carrying on hand luggage a plenty. So I suspect I shall call Air New Zealand again and hopefully not talk to Incorrect27kgMan or MockingWoman and will probably get a completely different set of ludicrous instructions for my journey home.

I would be slightly less worried about the boredom I am to endure without my 41 songs if Air New Zealand’s televisual delights were slightly less than crap. On the journey over, the entire system had to be rebooted after a problem occurred on one terminal (which may or may not have been mine) and that quickly spread through cattle class and then through to first class when they finally decided to reboot the entire system (yes, run on Windows I discovered) and we were without entertainment for 45 minutes. This was a long time, but luckily I was about ready for a nap. I met a couple the other day who’d travelled over amidst all this plastic-bag-ness with Air New Zealand and their televisions just hadn’t worked. Apparently the new systems are only in place on half of their long haul aircrafts, and it seems that only two screens in the fleet function effectively at any one time.

In contrast to my miserable whitterings, I am aware of the need for an increased level of security in the UK’s airports which, from talking to many people on the subject, are amongst the slackest in the world. On entering Auckland I had my luggage rescanned and my entire suitcase searched (before it was returned to me padlocked with no sign of a key). From what I have derived from the BBC news website and from News 24 (having abandoned all hope of extracting anything useful or up to date from local news reports) I am amazed at the work that has been done by MI5 and I welcome increased security, despite the lack of convenience it may inflict on passengers. I am quite happy to trade inconvenience for increased safety; I’d just like a bit of uniformity on the whole thing (and between staff at Air New Zealand perhaps).

So, tomorrow I go home.

I am terrified. I am terrified of leaving him.

As the week has gone on, the ratio of worry about travel and worry about leaving my boyfriend has radically altered. I have stopped sleeping properly, through the day my productivity levels have dropped in correspondence with my lack of concentration and flightiness and therefore I am just left with the simple thoughts, the ones that are too overpowering to control and too overwhelming to deal with. I have spent time just sitting trying not to think but having no choice to do anything but, being too tired and too messy to extract anything of any use.

Before: he needed to go. He needed to start this, for both of us. We’d had too much of the waiting, too much of the waiting to say goodbye and for this to all begin. We weren’t coping in so many ways and we needed some relief.

Now though. Now I have spent a month realising how much I love my boyfriend and how much I need him. Only to start yet another normality, get used to another way of life.

Two and a half months is nothing, they say. That is what I have before he returns.