After an eight hour flight, we all bundled out of the plane with a massive shot of adrenaline. “Here we are! In America! Let’s GO! All we have to do is get through passport control. A formality. No more than that, surely. Oh look, a queue. We have those in England.”
Maybe they were trying to make us feel at home. Yes, of course, nothing makes an Englishman feel at home so much as a good long queue. But THREE HOURS. A THREE HOUR QUEUE?! Even the most ardent of queue fanciers would balk at such a prospect.
Being the diligent (obsessive) people we all are, we spent a large amount of our queue time discussing the play, Much Ado About Nothing, most likely to the chagrin of all the people around us, who just wanted to stand in a nice queue and not have people excitedly jabbering about Shakespeare while they did it.
Nonetheless, we finally emerged blinking and a little bit better informed into the bright early evening sunshine, all the while ignoring the frantic howling of our body clock “IT’S MIDNIGHT! HOW CAN IT BE LIGHT? THE WORLD IS ENDING!!!” And our transportation was before us. The final leg of the journey. And what a leg. It made up for all the queuing. A stretch limo! I have never been in one before. Here we all are:
Paul O’Mahony closest. He’s Benedick, Dogberry and more. Then me, Al Barclay, I’m Don Pedro, Friar Francis and more. Then Georgina Strawson, she’s Beatrice, Don John and more. Then Jack Whitam, he’s Claudio, Antonio and more, and finally Claire Redcliffe, she’s Leonato, Hero and more. This was taken around the moment that Claire realised she had packed nothing but 100 cardigans.
2 hours of luxury, cheesy eighties power ballads, iced soft drinks, slightly delirious conversations about sunsets and trucks, games of guess the eighties tune and “I spy”, sporadic unexpected bursts of sleep or laughter, and general hilarity, before finally we were in Notre Dame. Debra met us all as we emerged blinking from the vast car, five mildly hysterical zombies. She welcomed us, and told us we’d do all the important talking the next morning, for which we were grateful. So, we all grabbed the nearest burger, shoved it into our mouths, and fell into deep deep luxurious sleep.
(Posted by Al Barclay)