The greatest challenge for any writer has to be that of trying to make a 17-hour flight interesting to the reader. Before we get any further, I had better manage expectations by pointing out that air travel, when it goes well, is decidedly uneventful. 'Uneventful' is the exact adjective you want to use when describing being hurtled through the air in a metal cylinder weighing over 500 tons and composed of a bazillion parts, any of which might break or fall off at just the wrong moment. Especially if they are stamped with a 'Boeing' logo.
This is the reason why those earnest 'reviewers' of air travel on YouTube are reduced to whining that nobody gave then a hot towel and the bread rolls were lumpy. They have nothing else to write about. Wouldn't it be far more engaging (for engagement is what they seek most) if they suddenly looked at the camera in alarm and said,
"If I'm not mistaken, that sounds very like the noise a large jet engine might make when it's torn off the wing and then bounces off the tail section. Cabin crew are suspending meal service so I'll have to get back to you on the quality of the chocolate ganache in the next video. Oh...And don't forget to hit the 'subscribe' button."
The high point of our journey from New Zealand was our stopover in Dubai. Gill and I found ourselves granted access to the Emirates Business class lounge, albeit through the back door so to speak. On a previous flight our 'inflight entertainment' system had crashed leaving us unable to binge watch 'Friends' for a whole 17 hours. Rather than compensate us in real money for the inconvenience, Emirates gifted us a shed load of air miles which bumped us to Silver status. This award allowed us access to the hallowed ground of the Emirates lounge while we waited for our connection, even though we were not travelling business class.
Excited by the prospect of such privilege, I had googled reviews of the lounge before we travelled. The vast majority were of the opinion that, if Jesus were to open a waiting room on earth to let us know what was in store for us in heaven, then Emirates had got the contract. God is nothing if not ecumenical.
I'm not sure if it was the fatigue of a long flight but my immediate impression on entering the lounge was that I had walked into the break out lobby of the largest convention centre in the world which was hosting several thousand dentists attending a conference on 'New Horizons in Cavity Filling'. Their glazed expressions and slumped postures seemed to indicate that the keynote speaker had not quite lived up to the hype in the conference brochure.
The interior designer had obviously been given a tight brief to execute everything - floors, walls, ceilings and furniture in an inoffensive, culturally neutral and unimaginative style which is known in the trade as 'airport lounge'. The mood board would not, I suspect, have taken long to execute, as everything was the same shit-brown colour. The food was pedestrian and unexciting except for some excellent patisserie in which we both overindulged. I washed these sugar bombs down with a glass of 12-year-old red wine, which probably wasn't the pairing that the producers of this outstanding vintage intended, but I decided it was a better match than with the suspicious looking bloated and mottled sausages in their stainless steel mass grave.
At some point or another all travel writers venture into the unwelcome (to the reader anyway) area of bodily functions. In some cases this is justified, as in the case of the unfortunate Everest mountaineer who had to empty his bowels while hanging upside down in a crevasse into which he had carelessly fallen. O.K. yes I did make that up, but only because I'm struggling to think of ANY situation where poo should play ANY part in travel writing.
However, we need to skirt dangerously close to this topic if I am to give a comprehensive and honest account of our time in the Emirates lounge.
After eating, I made my way to the toilets. To my amazement, I discovered that once past the ornate and polished mahogany door there was a queue to use the facilities. It was as incongruous as opening a Louis Vitton bag in their opulent showroom and discovering a dog turd inside. Judging by the expressions on the faces of those waiting, this delay was not something they were accustomed to as elite travellers. If this had been a female toilet, I suspect everyone would have been exchanging life stories and destinations. Men however are different. We all stood at a carefully calculated distance from one another and studiously avoided eye contact while trying to find objects of interest to engage our attention on the polished marble walls.
The architect of the lounge had been given several fooball fields worth of real estate as the canvas for his dream lounge but the toilets seemed to be something of an afterthought. Making sure that nothing deviated from the shit brown palette had obviously distracted him or her from the need to ensure that overpampered, Armani-suited, vintage wine swilling VIPs should be able to attend to their bodily functions in a timely manner by the provision of numerous 'facilities'.
To my delight, I discovered the improbable reason for the queue. After each traveller exited a cubicle, the attendant would deftly block the next user from entering and disappear with mop and air freshener to make sure all was ready for the next occupant. The attendant was as thorough as one would expect in the circumstances, perhaps overly so, given the impatient queue.
It was at this precise moment that it happened. I felt a light touch on my arm and another attendant was pointing towards the exit as if instructing me to leave. As I was in a line of about 8 individuals I had absolutely no idea why I was being singled out and seemingly banished from the overloaded facilities.
Once out of the toilets, the attendant stopped in front of another polished mahogany door, removed a key from his pocket and, with a flourish, opened the door to a magnificent and roomy toilet. For a microsend, I wondered if this was the special VIP toilet made available for passing emirs but then I noticed the many handrails which announced, in less than subtle terms, that this was the disabled toilet.
By this time, I was in a somewhat confused state. Why me? I can only assume that because I was by far the oldest looking member of the queue the attendant had feared that the wait might be too long for my aged organs and decided to take matters into his own hands and ensure that I had urgent access to a toilet.
He quickly swirled a brush around the inside of the bowl, sprayed the air freshener with a theatrical wave of his arm, smiled at me and was gone.
Obviously, my 17 hour flight had made me look a lot more frail than I realised. However, it's nice to know that should I require access to a toilet in Dubai, the lounge attendants are well trained to spot the urgent cases.