» Airport Stories

Salaryman slap
/unlurk

For those of you who've been to Tokyo, you'll know just how immense Narita Airport is.I've turned up three hours early for my flight to Sydney just to make sure that all runs smoothly. Imagine my distress when I get to the aircraft-hangar sized check in lounge to discover that the baggage handlers are on strike and there are queues running the length of the place.

After enduring two hours of having my ankles rammed by small children with luggage trollies, I made it to customs only to find yet another monstrous queue waiting to entrap me. Another 45 minutes later and I'm sweating with worry that I'll miss my (due to leave in 15 mins) flight.

Anyway, two nice Belgian chaps let me jump to the front, the passport is duly stamped, and I'm off across the departure lounge like a rabbit fired from a grenade launcher. Three hours of constant caffination provide me with the speed and agility of a greased cat as I bob and weave through the crowd toward my gate.

This all suddenly goes into slow motion as my fashionably 'phat' trainer sails from my foot on its upswing and arcs across the lounge at mach 2 and then connects with the back of a Japanese salaryman's head with a satisfying 'thwok'.

He was angry. I bowed and scraped like a peasant (cunningly sweeping up my trainer at the same time) and legged it for the gate with enraged shouty salaryman in tow. At this point I'm fully expecting to be ritually decapitated. The air hostess at the gate looked at me like I was last week's airline dinner, but she still let me on the plane.

Karma was forthcoming though, I also lost my gameboy on that dash, forcing me to watch Ice Age six times in a row.

No apologies for length, you'll just have to stand further away.

/lurk
(Fri 3rd Mar 2006, 11:04, More)

» Unexpected Nudity

Eyebleach please
Walking through Waterloo station, I sauntered gently over to the screens that tell what trains are departing from Waterloo East. Having got my train time, I turn my head to the stairs that lead up from the concourse.

There, sat halfway up the stairs, was a gigantic filthy homeless woman who resembled nothing less than a recently dug-up potato in a skirt. Legs akimbo, she was cooling her fetid mimsy in the afternoon breeze.

I now take the escalator.
(Thu 28th May 2009, 13:56, More)

» Mobile phone disasters

Unexpected Partridge
Little Bro's chum comes over for dinner with parents and myself. My initial jitters about having a confirmed speed-freak and coke bandit over for tea subside when he puts on a tidy show of manners and polite conversation. A lovely, pre-dessert silence falls as everyone digests for thirty seconds or so before embarking on further feeding.

It was during this calm, contented silence that chum's phone receives a text, prompting it to exclaim: 'I'M HUNG LIKE A DONKEY!'

In Alan Partridge's voice. At, oh, around 100 decibels.

Parents laughed and pointed. He never lived it down.
(Mon 3rd Aug 2009, 17:18, More)

» That's me on TV!

Committee capers
As part of my job as a financial(ish) reporter, I get to go to fun things like the recent Treasury Select Committee meetings. I was there to watch McFall and his chums takes huge bites out of various bank bigwigs for letting the UK banking system tear itself apart. It was going to be fun.

The Committee meeting room is kitted out with television and stills cameras so that the proceedings can be transmitted without having to squeeze cameramen into what is really quite a small room. An excellent chance to get on TV you would have thought – but the fact that the place is normally packed to the rafters with journalists and I am not the tallest person in the world combined to rob me of any possible telly fame.

That was, until the end of the session with UKFI, when loads of the journos buggered off to cover some other story. Result!, thinks me, I'll shuffle along until I'm directly behind the interviewees and get my mug on the box.

And lo!, upon returning to the office, I discovered that the cameras had kind of caught me, and the arm of my shirt was in a video on the BBC website! (Second video on this page, top right corner, 1:26-1:29, white/blue shirt rolled up to the elbow, if you're some kind of freaky stalker.)

Flushed with fame, I immediately emailed everyone I knew and reveled in my newfound glory.

But of course, this QOTW is about TV, not Teh IntaRwebs.

Got home – still feeling like I've scored the winning goal in the World Cup – and dance around the kitchen making dinner for myself and my special ladyfriend while she watches the news.

'Quick!', she cried, 'they're showing the footage from the meeting on the news, perhaps you'll be on TV!'

I rushed in from the kitchen and held my breath as for five minutes the footage dodged around me, showing everyone else in the audience. I knew I was going to be on - I had to be. Then, just as the interviewee was finishing his sentence, the camera panned up slightly... Yes, this was it...come on....and revealed my shiny, shiny bald spot, glinting like a freshly minted meatcoin.

Yup, the moment the cameras were on me, I'd bent down to get something out of my bag.

Fucking genius.

/sobs

Apologies for length, it's no bigger than my disappointment.
(Thu 11th Jun 2009, 12:56, More)