Procrastination, thy name is packing!

I have, scornfully, thrown a few scraps of clothing into a large case and considered the major part of this loathsome occupation done.

The more interesting packing of all those gadgets without which civilized life is impossible still awaits and the depressing pile of uniformly black leads and plugs demands attention.  Which I will delay until the last moment.

My packing is a prime example of “the book for the bath syndrome.”  I sometimes take an age to choose the appropriate book to read in the bath, sometimes taking more time over the choice than the time that I am going to spend in the bath.  Once chosen the book usually remains unread: but it is there “in case”.  The stuff I take is quite literally “in case” usually festering away in the bottom of the luggage and not used at any point in the trip.  But I would not like to be without it.  It is a comforter; a dummy; a pacifier!

Now I really do need to make a move and pack the remaining items.  It will then give me a chance to sit down and suddenly remember an essential that I have forgotten.  Like my spare pair of glasses or the contact lenses that I always vow I will wear instead.

In the airport.  I have just has as gratuitous a revolting meal as I have ever had to suffer in an airport in Britain.  The meal deal in the café in the maelstrom of a holding area for all the paupers travelling with EasyJet was disgusting.

The “caliente” bocadillo of cheese and bacon was made “not cold” (anything more would be a grave misappropriation of any words to do with “heat”) in a filthy piece of equipment which looked as if it has been once an essential part of the persuasive equipment of some particularly vicious Spanish Inquisitor.  After a few (more than two and less than four) seconds this item of the culinary art of Catalonia was deemed ready for consumption.

The tastiest parts of this abortion were the charred remains of previous disasters.  At least the cold lager in the cheap plastic cup was acceptable as was the small packet of crisps that made up this meal deal.  At €8.95 this has to be the worst value that I have had so far in my time in Barcelona.

This holding area is full of grotesque caricatures of British low-life abroad.  Shaven headed thugs in sports shirts and trakkie bottoms abound.  As my seat is en route to the toilets I have seen whole families, none of whose members look as though they could aspire to what Huxley in “Brave New World” termed epsilon semi morons.

One particularly repulsive plump scion was a shaven headed ginger dwarf-like oikish child dressed in cut off sleeve Estoril sports shirt with a (surely not!) tattoo of a dog going to the toilet on his left arm.  His leprously freckled face was almost hidden by what appeared to be a large plastic bomb from which he was drinking via the fuse!  Some things you just can’t make up!

As I am next to the escalator I can view new batches of freaks that are constantly arriving to boost the number of characters which are rapidly forming something worthy of the combine brushes of Bosch and Brueghel at their most nightmarish.

The grotesques have now all lined up to board a plane, I have just discovered, for Belfast.  I rest my case.

It is about now that I go to the board and check my flight and then retire to my seat in cold fury as I find that it has been delayed and I have to sit on the specially designed pieces of discomfort for yet longer!

The plane left on timeish.  And we got into the UK in the scattered rain on timeish.  Even the entry into the UK was not too bad, as the usually sullen faced denizens of the checking of the passports seemed unusually receptive and human.

The drive from Bristol was fraught with fear as I passed each of the recognized stop points at each of the traditional points in the road where stoppages were expected.  Even the horror point of Newport (that vile “city”) was passed with relative ease.

Apart from the completely unnecessary intrusion of rain into my re-introduction to my native land, I have had a more than pleasant evening in Wales.

Now bed so that I can be bright and fresh for the journey to London tomorrow.