Hungry

After work tonight I rushed out to the bar across the road and inhaled a gin and tonic, before decelerating enough to swallow five truffle-oil-infested balls of fried cheese, and finished off by gulping half my wife's drink too. It was time to catch a flight again, which meant it was time for some alcoholic assistance.

Previously, we've got blotto and then got on the plane, but what with Hong Kong and everything else this year, we hadn't finished packing, which was a tactical error when you've chugged down booze and cheese in quick succession. Even if you haven't forgotten anything (and after yesterday's virtuoso performance of amnesia, I could have literally forgotten anything) you'll have a deep fear that you did fail to bring something.

Mostly, I was terrified that I'd forgotten to close the boot of the taxi properly and we'd lose our luggage halfway down the highway. We had one of those terrifying drivers who failed his audition to be an X-wing pilot in Star Wars and has been making up for it ever since.

However, we didn't die, and although the guy at the check in desk looked at us with an expression of dumbfounded surprise, like he'd just been teleported into the airport and had no clue what anything was, he found us in the caverns of the airline's booking system, and, like every other flight I have, told me that my request for a vegetarian meal hadn't been logged correctly and I was going to go without.

Never mind, it's only twelve hours on a metal plane, thousands of feet up in the air, with nothing to eat apart from a couple of bags of Haribo. Drat Changi airport for hiding the only decent restaurant (Cedele) a million miles away in Terminal 2. Drat myself for not thinking ahead and checking my booking had stipulated that I can't eat chicken or beef, and drat for not packing a decent meal like when we flew back from New York in September. Will I ever learn?

And now it's time. I'll be vomited out into another country in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, it will be Scotland, where the closest thing to vegetarian food is a deep fried pizza...