So in this post I started the story of my year of turning 40. I’ll be honest, this time last year, when 2019 was looming on the horizon, I had no clue whatsoever that this would be such an adventure.
Previously, on this blog…
So I returned from Canada, via Chicago. I had thought about going into Chicago itself as I had such a long stopover, and despite having gone to three conventions in that city, I’ve never actually gone anywhere besides the Brazilian restaurant downtown that my friends and I like (Fogo de Chao on LaSalle Bvd should anyone want to try it, I highly recommend the pace). I wasn’t quick-thinking enough though to go out of the arrivals lounge rather than heading through the transfer section, so I was re-checked in before I knew it and stuck in the airport.
One interesting little encounter though happened when my flight to Edinburgh finally came close to boarding and I moved to the relevant gate – O’Hare only really has a small central area of seating besides the individual gates so if you’re waiting for ages and don’t have a lot of cash to go from food outlet to food outlet, you end up just moving from gate to gate, shifting when a flight gets ready to board and the area becomes crowded. I’d forgotten though that the Edinburgh Festival was gearing up around that time, and sitting at my gate were a large group of people from a small theatre school somewhere in Upstate New York or Ohio or somewhere (I’ll admit, I forget), who were taking their play to the Festival Fringe.
We got talking and they seemed nice enough, and were asking for recommendations of places to go see while they were in Scotland, mostly stuff related to Outlander, and they told me a fair bit about their play. I wasn’t working for STV at that time but I do still know a lot of people who are there, and so they seemed so nice, I said to the kind of group leader, would it be okay if I passed on the details of their play to a producer I know, who quite often did shows around Festival time, focusing on the big names and the smaller attractions on the go. I thought the whole thing that this was their first time not just out of the US but out of their own state was quite interesting and might make for a good human interest piece. The leader seemed really nice and then the flight started to board, so we went our separate ways.
Got onto the plane, and a couple of the students were in the row behind me, a few of the really loud ones who’d been hanging around the gate. I’m just settling into my seat, when I hear these students start to insult me, not having seen I’m right in front, or at least I hope they didn’t realise I was there. They then moved on to Scotland in general, and spent most of the flight basically saying what a backward, stupid country it was, and not even with any kind of factual accuracy. The loudest of them claimed he was an expert in the UK, and then went on to say how the whole of Scotland was rural, intermittently switching to calling it ‘England’, and it continued for the whole seven hours of the flight. As a side note, I really must listen to my friend who suggested taking noise-cancelling headphones when I fly long haul.
So, needless to say, I did not feel so inclined to email my friend at STV when I got home. I thought long and hard about it, because one or two of the group had been okay, but this was quite a large proportion of them seated in the rows behind me and their attitude sucked. I still don’t know if I did the right thing, but I just felt uncomfortable helping to promote people who were so comfortable being horrible to others.
Anyway, that is a bit of a digression from the main narrative there. Got home from Canada, but I didn’t have much chance to recover from the jet lag. I had my trip to Australia coming up. Never flown with Emirates before, and I have to say their customer service was exceptional. The flight from Glasgow to Dubai was like something from a farce. First of all it was delayed because it was late getting into Glasgow, then it had some technical issue that held up boarding for half an hour and threatened to cancel the whole flight. Then when we finally got onboard, they discovered someone who had checked in hadn’t shown up and they had to then search the hold for his luggage so they could offload it. None of this would’ve bothered me normally, but the transfer time was pretty tight at Dubai. I tweeted Emirates to ask what to do, as the estimated arrival time wouldn’t give me any chance of making the connection, and they replied within about five minutes, assuring me that if I did miss the flight, they’d get me on an alternative and even put me up in a hotel if necessary.
However, when we got to Dubai and deplaned, Emirates actually had representatives waiting at the gate with little signs like limo drivers at the arrivals lounge. They had the flight numbers of all the flights people must have been connecting to, and gathered us all up in groups. Then our guy basically marched us through Dubai airport, through a couple of back doors to cut out areas of the terminal and get through quicker, put us through fast track security and all the time, kept radioing the gate of our flight to let them know what was happening and to keep holding.
So despite arriving in Dubai over an hour late, I actually made the flight to Perth. Got through customs at Perth way easier than I remembered from the last time I landed in Sydney, and caught the short connection.
As I said before, I wouldn’t have been able to do this trip at all if it weren’t for my friend Paul and his mum, who very kindly put me up while I was in Sydney. I will admit that I didn’t do any touristy stuff while in Sydney, firstly because I’ve been there twice before but mostly because it was more fun just to spend time with Paul and his family. I can’t overstate how welcome I was made to feel.
Our convention in Sydney started off with a meet and greet style thing at a hotel in the city centre on the Friday evening. Can’t say as the food was all that great – I have literally never seen finger food that included strips of turnip to dip in your hummus before – but it was a nice night and we met a load of nice people. Our table seemed to be the non-Sydney group (with the exception of Paul), and so there were folks there from Brisbane, Perth, and even New Zealand. One of the things I’ve noticed going to Aussie conventions is just how nice and friendly the people tend to be, compared to other countries. There’s none of this rivalry or possessiveness regarding characters or actors that you see a lot of in British and American cons, or that sort of snide one-upmanship that also rears its irritating head a lot amongst US and UK fans. Any time I’ve gone to Australia for one of these things, I’ve always come home with more friends on Facebook and this was the case again this time. I met an amazing couple of twins from Queensland, in particular, who were just inspiring, the way they’re cutting a swathe for themselves in the world and heading after their dreams.
The convention itself was, I have to say, very well organised. Paul’s cousin also joined us on the Saturday, and again kind of adopted me as soon as we met. Only downside I think was they had two photographers doing the shoots with the actors, and one, though a very, very nice guy, was really awful. Every photo I have that he took is just frightful.
Once the convention was over, though, I had to head to Sydney airport so I could get to Melbourne for the next day of the event. Bittersweet kind of thing because it meant leaving Paul and his family, but we had arranged to meet up again for a final coffee when I was on my way back home at the end of the trip.
Melbourne, I have to say, was freezing. Even as a Scot, used to stupid weather at all times of the year, I have to say that it was bitterly cold. Apparently the wind was coming up from Antarctica and bringing the ice with it. To me, it felt like someone had severely annoyed Queen Elsa and she was on a rampage. I hadn’t really thought about it being that cold, even though last time I’d been in Sydney it had been kind of changeable so I’d brought some warmer clothes. So first job in Melbourne was to find somewhere that sold heavy denier tights!
The event there was held at Melbourne university, in one of the lecture halls. I now know that my University of Edinburgh log in also gets me into educational wifi networks around the world, which was very cool. Again, I made a few friends during the event, including the ‘Triangle of Jesses’ – at the meet and greet that evening, it turned out that all three women sitting at the end of our table were called Jessica.
I did do some sightseeing in Melbourne but to be honest, it was too cold to wander about for long!
That was supposed to be the end of the birthday extravaganza and I even said to the actor I’d gone to see that I was done now and wouldn’t be travelling again.
Turned out not to be the case though…
TBC.
J M Ramage -Work In Progress 
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