Caroline Pearce
I settle into my window seat, wedging my flight bag under the seat in front, my shoes between my seat and the wall of the plane, and my two-litre bottle of water next to my legs, within arm’s reach. This is my own little pocket of space for the next twenty-four hours and I know how to make the most of it. I’ve got everything I need: a book, a trashy magazine, my diary and pen, Sony Discman and CDs, hand cream, moisturising facial spray, tickets, money, passport and a visa for a new life. Well, one year of new life, at least.
It’s early 2002, five months since two planes plunged through the twin towers in New York. The news broke on the radio while I was at work in a job I hated in a London I’d grown tired of. Just as the whole world changed that day, something changed in me too. By December I had quit the job, applied for a Working Holiday Visa to Australia, and was plotting my escape.
‘Is that what people do nowadays, darling?’ my mother enquired, alarmed that I was gallivanting off to the other side of the world at age twenty-nine instead of settling down to responsible adult life. But I hadn’t forged a solid career or found the love of my life, so what was keeping me? My family and friends would still be there when I got back. As no one was up for joining me at that time, I resolved to go it alone. I’d be bound to meet other travellers once I got there—although that prospect made my stomach somersault almost as much as the notion of being by myself.
I’ve never been one for dining alone, the experience being altogether too self-conscious, too conspicuous. But travelling alone—the business of getting from A to B, especially when there is some distance in between—is an entirely different proposition. Travelling alone is freedom and independence, courage and self-sufficiency, feeling ever so grown up—even now that I am grown up! It’s enforced relaxation and reflection, a precious moment in time when life is put on pause, a capsule of transition between one life and another. And because travelling alone necessitates dining alone, the latter is lifted out of the mire of its usual associations and imbued instead with those of the former.
The flight isn’t full so I have two seats to myself, which means space to spread out and easy access to loos and more water. And no stilted exchanges with a stranger I have no desire to engage in conversation. Adjusting to the hum of the engines and looking forward to the drinks trolley with its clinking bottles and packets of nuts, I get out my diary and pen. I’m engrossed in exploring my hopes and dreams for my impending adventure when dinner is served.
Airplane food is never very good, but I love it nonetheless. I love the tiny portions perfectly packaged and jigsawed together, the dry bread roll and butter, the impossible-to-open salad dressing sachets, the inevitable beef or chicken, the condensation on the inside of the foil lid, the glutinous sauces and overcooked vegetables, the strange desserts, the fact that although there’s not very much of it, it always seems to fill me up.
Food also helps to break up the monotony of a long plane journey, organising it into bite-size chunks, imposing a routine, a comforting ritual, however contrived. Sometimes food comes when I’m not yet hungry for another meal, but I eat anyway, surrendering to the temporary institutionalisation inside this metal tube hurtling through the air.
I watch movies, three or four, on a screen that’s far too small with sound that’s either too loud or too soft, but it’s wonderful nevertheless, this indulgent film festival for one. Some of the films fill me with sadness, some joy, but there’s no one to share these feelings with, despite my close proximity to hundreds of other passengers. What do my emotions mean if there’s nobody else to acknowledge them, to validate them—to validate me?
On arrival in Sydney I’m meeting my best friend, Catherine, and a friend of hers. They’re having an extended holiday while I’m on a backpacker’s budget; how am I going to keep my expenses under control, given their penchant for eating out? After a couple of weeks, though, they’ll move on up the coast, and if I don’t want to be dining alone I’m going to have to make some new friends. I think of my brother’s advice to me before I left: ‘If you want to have a good time in Australia you’re going to have to chill out!’ He’s got a point.
I try to sleep, as best I can in an almost upright position, mouth dry, neck cricked, legs numb and sore. Coughs and wails invade my cocoon of unconsciousness, and coiffed flight attendants glide ghost-like down the dark aisles delivering orange juice, ice-creams and practised smiles. Regularly I get up to walk around, go to the loo, refill my water bottle and do a few embarrassed, awkward yoga stretches in the confined space near one of the exit rows.
Eventually, while most of Australia still sleeps, it’s breakfast time in the fantasy time zone in the sky. Relieved to have made it through the night, I chomp with gusto through greasy sausage, congealed scrambled eggs, and a mush of boiled baked beans, washed down with lukewarm tea.
Fortified, spirits lifted, I look around the cabin properly for the first time and notice a spiky-haired girl in the seat across the aisle from me. She senses my furtive gaze, looks up and grimaces. ‘Terrible food on planes, isn’t it? Can’t wait for something decent!’ I smile and mumble agreement but she persists, asking the usual traveller questions: where are you from, where are you going, what are your plans?
Lisa has a thick Glasgow accent and a don’t-mess-with-me air that’s completely dispelled by a husky laugh that makes her eyes shine. She’s heading for Coogee to bake on the beach and, eventually, find a bar job. I’m staying in Manly with my friend while she’s in town, but then I’ll be moving to Coogee too.
‘Let me know when you get there,’ she says, scribbling her email address on the back of her boarding pass with a chewed pen. ‘I’ve heard of a great Thai place we could check out, if you like?’
We’re so busy chatting I don’t notice that the hundreds of passengers, poised for disembarkation, weighed down by their various belongings, have started to shuffle towards the front of the plane. I hastily throw my carefully stowed Discman, diary and book, props of the solo traveller, unneeded for now, into my bag and pull on my shoes. At the exit I smile back at the flight attendants with their freshly applied lipstick, and emerge blinking into the bright sunlight of the new world, my new friend right behind me.