The WebStress goes south

In a fit of independence (for which I am not wonderfully well known) I decided to book a break to the South Island to stay with the parents of my friends.

So on Monday my boyfriend dropped me off at the local airport.

Now I haven’t done much flying full stop and have never before flown domestically. I knew things were going to be slightly different from the normal sweat-inducing check in procedure when my e-ticket instructed I produce some form of ID, one of which listed was a credit card.

In the UK a credit card, in my experience, counts for absolutely nothing by way of proving your identity. I may be the proud owner of a Tesco Platinum credit card with an unsettlingly large limit on it (which has accrued a fair old whack of club card vouchers which have, in turn, been transformed into alcohol. Brilliant) but as ID a note from my mum would probably be more effective.

I took my passport anyway, being as over cautious as a UK citizen probably is in trying to prove who they are. I also had my drivers license and my credit card as backup, just in case.

Domestic check ins, at least in this example, are not particularly thorough, to say the least. The check in girl didn’t even want to see either of the two identical copies of the e-ticket I’d printed out (just in case one spontaneously combusted I imagine, I’m not always sure of my over cautious logic. Actually its probably more likely that I would spill some foodstuff or beverage over one copy, so the other is stored a safe distance from the first). And she used the words ‘cool bananas’.

The building that houses domestic and international departures appears to be made partially out of chipboard (an alternative to the usual wood or corrugated iron that seems to hold most of the houses up). They are either doing a lot of building work at the airport or have adapted the same semi-permanent, flat-pack popup book approach of the rest of the houses in the area that look like they were made out of a kit from Ikea in about half an hour and can be demolished just as quickly.

In a part of the world prone to earthquakes I am continually surprised by the lack of stability places seem to have, all the shops appear to look like warehouses (and have names as such – Stationary Warehouse, Tools Warehouse, The Warehouse…) and my Lego constructions (that I made a long time ago *ahem*) looked more sturdy than a lot of the houses. But maybe they’ve got the right idea – the same Glastonbury Tent theory that I’ve adopted of recent years: Buy one from Asda for £15, spend the weekend with water slowly seeping through the canvas onto your sleeping bag, clothes and face, leave it standing when you leave for either some poor lost, off their face festival goer to sleep in or someone to fall into (last year it was Yorkshire Lass’s bloke) and get a new one the next year. No personal attachment and the correct amount of unbent tent pegs every time.

I explored my gate (number 3 of 4) to find out that all 3 gates appeared to be through one door onto some tarmac. So I waited for the departure board to announce boarding. Until I realised the departure board was actually a TV showing a teletext screen of the airport’s arrivals and departures.

Eventually, some lovely Air New Zealand lass announced our departure and we traipsed over to the aeroplane.

The flight was beautiful and I took several hundred photographs (or so it must have seemed to my boyfriend last night when I was saying ‘look here’s one out of the window of the sky’, ‘here’s another one but don’t those clouds look like a ploughed field?’, ‘here’s some mountains from the sky’ etc) and I was beginning to feel suitably smug at my own jet setting independence.

And then the Captain announced that it was going to be a little bumpy.

That was pilot speak, I interpreted in hindsight, for ‘hold on to your hats guys, this is going to be one hell of a turbulent ride’.

The next hour I spent gripping on to the seat as we were tossed about the beautiful sky (that I was beginning to find less tranquil by the minute) as the winds hit the plane like small children violently attacking a piñata. I looked at other passengers, as terror gripped hold of my facial muscles and spread through my already tense body, to see if anyone else shared my fear. No one seemed to notice. One passenger was even smiling (maybe it was a physical representation of hysteria). I on the other hand was feeling like I was going to be seeing the chocolate chip biscuit and cup of tea they had so kindly treated me to very soon.

Luckily my return journey, after a beautiful few days exploring a tiny fraction of the South Island, was a little less eventful. I didn’t quite manage ‘relaxed’ but I conquered ‘petrified’ fairly reasonably considering the circumstances.

I have two weeks until I fly again which should hopefully allow me just enough time to erase any remnants of terror floating around my brain before I go through the whole thing again (if only I could be prescriptive over what I remember and swap memories of fear for song lyrics or intelligent ‘after dinner’ facts).