Blog Archives
MWF 2010 authors on… air travel
As lots of authors are flying in to Melbourne, and the festival is about to begin, here is the last in the ‘MWF 2010 authors on…’ series. As always, click on their names for info on their festival appearances. I hope you’ve enjoyed the series!
It is my first flight.
I am 11 months old. We are at Essendon airport. In those days you got to walk out onto the tarmac, right up to the aircraft. All your relatives could come up to the plane and wish you goodbye. We are on our way to Canada. We are going away for a long time. We will stop in Sydney, Honolulu and Vancouver. When we get off the plane in Toronto my father is waiting on the tarmac in the blistering cold. I haven’t seen him for six months. I don’t remember him at all.
Someone ought to write a book on air travel etiquette for international flights (unless it’s already been done and I missed it). It could include such helpful hints as: smile at the person/people sitting next to you, but not too warmly; bring along a blow-up pillow to avoid leaning on some poor stranger’s shoulder; if you have a window-seat, visit the loo before the lights are dimmed for the ‘night’. Other suggestions welcome.
I developed a bad fear of flying as a result of one very bad flight from Melbourne about 15 years ago in which the plane circled Sydney for a long time, unable to land because of bad weather, and in my memory it was actually hit by lightning but maybe that just can’t be true. Since then the fear has receded – I guess I’ve been up and down enough times in a plane by now to have beaten it into my mind that I probably will survive. It’s still a good excuse to enjoy a few hours on Valium, although that has become a real luxury now, something I only do when I travel without my son (international flights with a small child are a whole other story). I am a compulsive eavesdropper so I love the opportunities a plane provides. There’s nothing like the view I saw once, the moon in a night sky on one side of the plane and dawn breaking on the other.
‘On another tip, another trip, another plane/
I think of life and I wonder will it be the same.’ – ‘Hemingway’, Omar Musa, 2009
Omar Musa “Hemingway” (Dir: Tom Spiers) from MRTVIDZ on Vimeo.
Feel free to share your own responses to the topic, or to the authors’ responses, in the comments.
Melbourne Writers Festival blog 