AmyNomad

It's too early and my eyesight sucks.

Glasses falling off of me, wallet & passport held tight.

I am secure here in the airport.

All the checks and bright lights.

Buckling and unbuckling my belts, whipping off my hot boots tripping over the laces.

Wish I had eaten my ready brek.

In the stuffy, noisy lounge, everyone is suddenly standing up together.

Didn’t catch that & no excuse as didn’t have me ipod on nor wasn’t witterin nor twitterin on da pone.

Up up up upsadaisys tannoi hannoi hanna - who is that speaking?

Shit, is that a flight cancelled delayed or merely announced?

And everyone is standing, fearing to lose their seats, knocking over water bottles, empty paper coffee cups n crumbs of cake, clutching their belongings.

The blonde blue-eyed woman beside me who had been polishing her iphone tells me it is Remembrance Day.

This is actually one minute of silence, can you believe? Only in Manchester airport?!

It is windy out the queue thickens. More are standing now not to remember but to file a huffing puffing yet orderly line for the one customer service agent who will Zena-fight off their stressed complaints about cancelled flights to Landhan town! Glad it's only dirty Dublin I'm heading for.

Anyway me and the blonde. We find we have a bit in common after all – she’s going to visit the daughter in Edinburgh. "I’m jut worried she’s going to stay there," she says, "Ah not too far," says I. "No I live in Gibraltar & it is very inconvenient." I tell her I like Tarifa and she agrees about the wind making everyone there so mad– Yes, and Gibraltar...my mind flutters and flitters. It always it goes back to Ulysses and good ol Mollser Bloom wherever I go…

”…...yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe…... ”

So yes indeed, minute silence over and this, my first conscious Remembrance Day I look about. A fella in a cap in front of me is digging the Daily Star and I can see it is only 15p for such rubbish. Ah sure it’s for the sport they say. I remember Noam and he selling papers on street corners as a boy – that’s how he was inspired to critique the media….ho hum. This reader has black laced up hiking boots and his travel companion is Irish cos I can hear him yakking loudly ‘cheers Cathal’ he hoots and clicks.

Remember me memento mori, Eminem! Would ya look at the mug on that fella.

Who is this Iron Man I am trying to read by Ted Hughes? Can’t make head nor tail for all the commotion. A working stiff sees me all safe, secure and still and decides to drop down beside me in his brown shoes and continues excavating his excel shit sheet. God love him. Working on the go. In the flow. But I see him peek here & there like myself…one cannot resist people watching on the job, in the hub on a busy Monday cold morning. With no God-damned smoking section anywhere in sight. Spreadsheetman is caught unawares, jumps to attention and promptly follows the lead of my blonde-haired friend for the Edinburgh flight. She darts quickly and tells me she doesn’t even know where she’s going. I look ahead and see in huge yellow writing: GATE 121-49 straight ahead. Thank you says she. Have a safe trip. No glasses needed!

Got to keep moving. Can’t still still. Would they ever announce the feckin gate. Waiting for the board to announce the gate number. I rove from perfumes to magazines to chocolate, too tired and lovesick to eat or drink. I just want to go home. There’s no place like home and I left my glittery Dorothy shoes with the skin and blister, wouldn’t fit in the bag…fuck I’d love a fag.

Reference to Noam Chomsky