Filed under: A, potpourri | Tags: A, Aberdeen, ABZ, airport, Ancaster, Canada, great white north, Heathrow, home, LHR, London, London Heathrow, Newfoundland, Ontario, Pearson, Pearson International, Toronto, truth, truthiness, YYZ
I’m now home in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, and am finally resetting my circadian rhythms to better sync up with that of the Eastern Standard. Getting here was quite the labour; I woke up at 4am GMT on Friday to catch my 6.30am flight to London Heathrow, then had a layover (with a fellow Canadian, a Newfie) until noon. I popped a couple sleeping pills which did little to alleviate the sounds of the phlegmy jerk who was sitting in the seat behind mine on the plane to Toronto (I decided, after he snorted snot for the tenth time, to tell him that if he needed a tissue, he should please ask for one. Literally a minute later, he taps me on the shoulder and offers me the tissue; I tell him ‘no, it’s YOU who needs it.’ For this effort, two Francophone women gave me looks of admiration and a quick thumbs-up).
The flight is daylight the entire ride over, and all my meals consisted of something+beans (beans+rice, chickpeas+hummus in a tiny pita, some kind of beanish snack, and a crappy UK-style soy pudding) which made me feel not great. I’d only slept about 2 hours before going out as I went to a gig the night before with my friend, M, who is due for surgery in a few hours. He’ll be convalescing in Birmingham for a month after this, so it’ll be awhile before I see him again. Needless to say, my baseline wasn’t brilliant.
After landing a half-hour early at Pearson International (or, in lazy terms, YYZ), I stood in line for Customs for 45 minutes while pondering whether I’d claimed the correct amount for gifts I’d brought in (a massive underestimate, I realised later), and well, I’ll be more observant of liquor allowances in the future so I don’t have to go for truthiness over truth.
Both of my parents were working on Friday until 5pm, so I offered to take a really long route home to make it a little more convenient for them. I’d been traveling for 14 hours by this point (and awake for 16) and figured that a few more hours wouldn’t kill me. So I took the shuttle bus to the subway, then rode from Kipling station to Union, where I waited for 30 minutes for a train to Hamilton. I met my dad in the station there at 7.30pm EST and nearly cried because I was so g-d tired.
I went to my Grandma’s house (where she had picked up cider for me – what a dear – but I was beyond wanting to drink), then went home and crashed at 10pm (3am GMT).
I think I’m back on schedule now, and in the next few days I’ll get my act together to update the blog about St Paddy’s in Dublin, being home, and so forth. So stay tuned, amigas and amigos.
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