Categories: postcards
Date: 18 February 2008 13:42:33
The next stage of Felicia Fogg's journey was to Dublin. This entailed another long wait in the airport but as I had been suffering from insomnia for about two weeks, I managed to catch up on a bit of shut-eye in a quiet corner. I was awoken from my slumbers by two fellow travellers asking me if the two empty chairs next to me were free. I assumed this is what they were asking as I didn't actually understand the language they were using. To my utter astonishment, I found myself replying in rather strangely accented English - "Yes, you kan seet there" to which they said "We kan seet there?" - "Yes, you kan seet there." I have no idea what came over me and I closed my eyes again to feign sleep and snigger inwardly.
The plane set off at about four o'clock in the afternoon and chased an orange sunset all the way. (I procured my rightful window seat on this occasion and checked out my neighbour's thumbs. He belonged to the 99.999% of the population with allegedly dominant thumb genes).
On arrival in Dublin, passengers were welcomed "home" by a big poster depicting the members of Westlife. We were spared the musical accompaniment as we collected our bags. I was somewhat surprised to see mine as I had spent quite a while watching the baggage trucks beetling to and fro and marvelled that all these bags seemed to end up on the correct aircraft - even when left to the devices of this novice self-checker-inner.
My accommodation gloried in the name of the Georg Frederic Handel Hotel. The reason for this was that it was built on the site of the "musick hall" where the first performance of Messiah had been performed on 13 April 1742. The audience at this event were expected to dress appropriately: "ladies are requested attend without hoops and gentlement without swords".
There were no hoops or swords in evidence as I opened the door to reception - nor was there any trace of Handel or his contribution to the world of classical music as one might have expected. There was some deafening cacophony of sound blasting its way out of the bar and I was only too pleased to escape upstairs after completing the formalities at reception. Westlife - all is forgiven!
In fact, the whole place had something of a confused identity. The bedroom had a carpet woven with treble clefs, the bar was called Karma and played hard rock and the breakfast room had a sort of Asian/Bhuddist decor with classical music playing as you ploughed your way through your "full Irish breakfast" served by waitresses from Eastern Europe.