Next time I get that feeling that I've forgotten something I'll really take time out to fully explore the experience and get right down to the root cause, that you've generally forgotten something. I had just such a nagging feeling in the taxi at 2:30am, all the way to the coach station, that something was indeed absent from my assortment of bags. I felt just like Columbo when he's got something at the back of his mind that compels him to stalk a wealthy cinema owner whose wife has just been tragically murdered after seeing subliminal imagery in the film to make her go to the foyer and get a drink, where her killer was conveniently poised.
Upon reaching the coach station I realised that it was the power adapter for my laptop that was giving me visions of a stubbed out cigar and a tattered brown mac. Faced with the prospect of listening to children screaming for 8 hours while jetting off to Dubai, I made a fervent attempt at getting home and back in 17 minutes. Aided by a taxi driver bursting with knowledge of the middle east ("it's just a theifdom, the emirates all are, £4.80 please mate"), I arrived back at the bus station fully equipped to fend off the annoyances of being trapped in a flying metal tube with 200 other people for 8 hours.
After a 2 hour coach ride, during which I watched the sunset, thought it was nice, then thought being at home in bed would've been nicer, i reached Heathrow and checked in to the flight. Checkin wasn't even due to start for another 40 minutes but all the window seats had gone apart from the "emergency seat", meaning you're the first person to get sucked out into the atmosphere in the event of the door breaking. I sat and read while the departure lounge filled slowly with little trickles of bleary eyed tourists. At 6am I decided that it was late enough to warrant breakfast and bought a "classic" new york style bagel, a "sumptuous feast of salmon, dill, phildelphia cream cheese and cracked black pepper". I was confused to find a lethargically wrapped stale bagel filled with some shiney salmon and smeared cheese with not even a hint of dill.
In front of me several american teenagers complained that it was costing them twice as much as it would back home. i chuckled on the inside, the way that only irritating teenagers in various states of distress and inconvenience can make you chuckle.
Boarding the plane I was already falling asleep, having been unable to sleep the night before in anticipation of getting on the plance and unable to sleep that night as I had to actually get to said aeromobile. 8 hours of interrupted sleep and nodding off, I arrived in Dubai. I bought a few litres of booze for my colleague, who as yet doesn't have a license to buy alcohol. Perhaps she has not passed her alcohol test, during which you have to reverse round a corner, spin round twelve times with your head touching a pole on the ground, then run back to your base, performing an emergency stop then vomiting into a gutter while your friend holds your hair back and reassures you that gary wasn't worth it. Maybe she got too many minor faults and failed at the last hurdle for thinking that gary was indeed worth it.
Arriving at the B&B that had been arranged for me, I was shown to my room, kitted out with white tiled floor (more on that later), king sized bed, satelite TV, wireless broadband, black tiled bathroom with moulded transparent glass sink. I was invited out into the front garden where we were due to have a barbeque party with many many guests, past and present.
Names have been witheld to protect all, both the innocent and the guilty. Among the crowd were some lovely people, kind and interesting. There were also a few intensely conceited and vacuous people, so drunk that they appeared unable to acknowledge your presence unless you, like them, barked continuously about your turnover and how many acquisitions you'd made this year. As one woman's consciousness began to fade, unable to make any form of eye contact except to molest her immaculately chiselled, equally insipid australian boyfriend, she was taken home. The party wound down with only the genuinely positive and engaging people left.
I realised that I had to be up for work the next day so made my way to bed, had a shower and lay down. It was only a few hours later that i woke up in a pool of my own sweat and realised that the air conditioning was completely dead and I was being cooked alive. After fumbling around in the dark unsuccessfully for an hour I relented and switched the light on to better see why the air conditioning was rebelling against its life of servitude. As I stood on the metre wide wooden shelf around the bed, pointing the remote control at the plastic carcass stuck to the wall, I stepped backwards onto the floor and sliipped on the surface still wet from walking out of the shower. I remember thinkging that I should probably lose some weight as my elbow and knee were slamming down onto the refreshingly cool tiled floor. I lay there for several minutes, frustrated at the remote control's inability to wake the air conditioning, refreshed at the cool floor but also annoyed at the pain in my arm and leg.
After another hour of being unable to work out why the machine just wouldn't work, I gave up and went to bed. Lying spread out on my back, nursing my elbow, I tried not to breathe or move in any way. Eventually the sun came up and I shuffled off to breakfast, eager to find someone to fix such a vital piece of equipment. After a heart-felt apology from the owners and a slap-up breakfast I headed off with another colleague to the office to begin my first day of work.
