PRESENT DAY SNIPPET: TRAVELLING FROM MANCHESTER TO ATLANTA TO TALLAHASSEE
PRESENT DAY SNIPPET: TRAVELLING FROM MANCHESTER TO ATLANTA TO TALLAHASSEE
America just hits differently, only sometimes for the right reasons
This post is too long for email (because of images) so you’ll have to click into the post to read the full thing!
Whilst my postman husband is merrily back home in Yorkshire delivering Christmas cards and packages in the snow on the dark Autumn days of early December (weird, right, that it’s not officially winter until the winter solstice on the 21st, which happens to be the day after my late grandfather’s wife’s birthday, Grandma Gill), I’m in north Florida with my mum, baby sister, and stepfather.
I’m missing my husband terribly and wish he was with me but even if we could afford for him to take a month off unpaid (as he’s used all of his generous seven weeks off this year), the Royal Mail would most likely answer a big fat “no” to his being gone for a month during their busiest time of year, especially when they bring in extra staff to cover unprecedented mountains of post each holiday season.
As evinced by this Royal Mail ad, Michael always dances when delivering the post (or is that in the kitchen with dance music when cooking our tea? Definitely the latter). Royal Mail, eroding contracts since privatisation™. You know the greedy percentages the postmen sucked up from the strike? Um, yes, that was only if they signed away their lives but that’s another matter. And RM forced their hand so what they are left with is less than satisfying. I mean some postmen earn under £25k a year and the CEO is on half a mil plus bonuses (23 times higher than the average worker, one source reported) and the postmen are the greedy ones…
Despite all that, my husband has loved his job for the past fifteen-plus years (may even be over eighteen years) and as much as I’d love to move more at work, personally, I’d really rather not be outside in the pissing British rain but he seems to love being outside walking twelve miles per day and then coming home to garden, cook, and do the laundry. Bless him. Really! He’s a gem of a husband.
When was my last Stateside visit?
Anyway, back to flying to the States. I haven’t been back since my mother got married to my stepfather in 2018. They’d been together a decade at this point and I think we were all starting to wonder if she’d ever make it down the aisle again.
Our family has always adored Lamar, who is from Oregon and had a Canadian father. He has a kind heart and is such a good-natured, calm, generous, animal-loving, and intelligent human. He’s the best thing that ever happened to my mother. He’s the reason for her success (making it to the Directorship of a charity organisation) – and even Hannah’s, but that’s another matter.
He was there for my baby sister growing up since she was about five or six years old and as she turns 21 in January, I’ve reflected on his presence in my life when I turned 21 myself (and the fact he bought me Three Olives vodka and a pack of aspirin. Lols).
Mum and Lamar’s wedding was wonderful and it was lovely also to see Brittany, Chester, Kristy, Sarah and Anna (my high school twin besties), Jayde (one of my Germany ladies who flew to Florida to see me – so amazing), and my family during that visit too.
Hopefully, next year M will actually come with me!
Why didn’t I come back for five years?
But I hadn’t been back in years and that was really because of COVID-19, the postponement of my and Michael’s wedding, the fact that Mum and Lamar visited me in England in November 2020 when my beloved grandfather was dying of lung cancer and again in September 2021 when M and I finally got married – and then M and I actually had time travelling again in 2022 to Greece and Mexico.
When I realised my mama was turning 60, I thought I really just wanted to be there with her that day (I missed her 50th) even if she didn’t want a big party to celebrate (I asked). Funnily enough, she has such a wonderful community here in Madison, Florida that I almost wish I had arranged a party as I’m sure she’d have many guests who adore her to celebrate.
How I got to come
So, I asked my amazing boss at work (the Global Head of Copyediting) who is based in Singapore if I could work from Florida for a month – and take a few days off here and there – and she said yes. I have, understandably, to align with my UK work hours (since I manage the Europe copy ed team and need to be online during Europe hours otherwise there's no work to do since we do daily news and publishing — not that my team needs my “expertise” as they're all amazing, talented, capable journalists and copy eds and know the day-to-day better than I do as I’m still relatively new) so essentially, I’ve been working 5 am to 1 pm or 6 am to 2 pm, depending on the day, with my usual hour and a half for lunch which is a little odd to take around 10.30 am but I’m making it work.
And whilst 5.30 am is a semi-acceptable wake-up time since I have been going to bed ridiculously early (a la 9.30 pm), 4.30 am seems unusually cruel, but sometimes I’ll have a nap after work and then walk Teddy, the family dog, around the lake with me and cuddle with the cats.
Hannah, my baby sis, is a super-gamer so she has very high-speed posh internet and double screens (like I have at my home office setup except one of hers is rotated to “portrait” for what reason I've yet to garner) so working from Florida is “working” thus far even if it’s taken some adaptation – such as kicking my poor darling sis out of her room at 4.30 am. She’s not loving that factor so much – poor kid. And I have had to get used to her giant microphone vised to the desk in my eyeline. Brill!
The flight(s) from Manchester to Atlanta to Tallahassee
Michael and I have been lucky to do a fair bit of travelling together – mostly of the British package holiday variety (to Spain, Greece, Turkey, Mexico and the like – and Madeira upcoming next June with Grammy in tow) which I actually love because Michael always researches the best places and everything is done for you (like airport transfers, good food, and poolside cocktails) besides day trips and optional lunches out.
Plus, in my uni days, with travelling to England as often as I could, and a jaunt to Paris (which I've been dining out on in memory for years with my lovely trip to see my Parisian friends but am yet to convince M to do with me as my first romantic Paris trip ever), I've had a fair few flights.
All of this is to say, what was most surprising on my journey back this time was my ATL to TLH leg…
The Manchester and Atlanta flight
I'll backtrack. Despite when young in my 20s, lugging three packed suitcases to England each time I visited (in the glory days when you could take all that for free), as of late I'm not an over-packer.
My holiday suitcase with M is always firmly well within the weight limit. Michael’s, however, is not. Michael, of course, has to pack for all 5,000 eventualities or possibilities he has conjured in his head, sometimes including snorkelling fins. We both love a swim, but he’s more like a sleek dolphin and I’m just paddling in the shallows like (I was going to say beached whale) I’m loving life.
Despite packing less, I've never once needed more than I put in my case and I'm an organised list maker so I put together shoes and clothes that can be rotated and work with each other, a capsule wardrobe if you will, but a whole lot less stylish than those Instagram model-like people. I used to be more stylish but I also used to be thinner and it was more effortless to look better (even if I didn’t think I looked better back then). Michael always pays for extra luggage allowance and even then, it's sometimes hairy so I call him “my princess.” To be fair, he’s quite fashionable even if he still dresses twenty-five and not forty-five.
But when I came to Florida this time I knew my 5+ kilos of Dairy Milk and English sweet accoutrements would pop my suitcase over the 23kg limit on the scale so I looked at the price for having overweight baggage online because I couldn't be arsed unloading the case I'd packed two weeks in advance, shuffling things around, and removing too many items. After all, I hadn’t packed that many clothes anyway. Online it said it would be £65 extra and I figured that's one way so why not?
When I arrived at the airport, however, at the weird, randomly placed semi-jutting out Virgin Atlantic desks (I booked via KLM but wasn't unhappy Virgin would be flying me as the flights are always as luxurious as you can get in cattle class), I was told my overweight suitcase would cost £109 extra (£44 more than I “wanted” to pay).
I'd always hoped I'd be randomly selected to upgrade to first class for free one time but that has never happened (spoiler: also didn't happen this time — here’s to hoping I can do my best
of Zee to Zen to manifest it someday) but I asked how much the upgrades were and was told Premium (Business Class) was an extra £289 (on top of the £1,000+ I've already paid for all the flights) and I thought let’s girl math.Or as my older sister Jae said in our family group chat when I texted about the scenario in real-time:
“Girl maths: it only cost £180 coz you’d have had to check your bag anyway. 😂”
That's absolutely right, Jae!
I figured if I'm paying £109 anyway to lug this heavy suitcase on this flight I might as well get bang for my buck (sadly, I could’ve gotten TWO suitcases for the upgrade – damn) and the girl said she could pop me in a big armchair near the window that also had no one sitting next to me. Michael never “lets” us have window seats because we’d have to disturb people to go to the loo and he’s far too English for that.
£289 on my debit card. Why not? I texted Michael and he said I deserved it for working so hard anyway and I should treat myself (adding “hun” at the end). Bless! He barely ever spends money on himself and is a saver; well, that is until I go away for a month and he's left home alone during Black Friday: we are now the owners of a Ninja dual drawer air dryer, apparently, and a wooden Die Hard advent calendar (which M insists is a Christmas film because it features a Christmas tree which is about as logical as saying Dude, Where’s My Car? is an Easter film because it contains an egg).
I won't upgrade every time and certainly not on the way back but let me tell you, boy, is premium worth it (if you can afford it or are one of those people with all those skymiles). You are greeted with Prosecco (I had two glasses and orange juice) in real, glass champagne flutes (with squat bases) and you get an actual menu of the lineup of meals which includes afternoon tea and real salt and pepper shakers shaped like mini aircraft. The food was posh and lovely. The blankets nicer. The pillows pillowier. The flight attendants are lovely (tbf they are in cattle class too) and you get access to a sort of snack bar (which I didn’t realise until the end, oh well). And also whatever drinks you want (I should’ve had way more than one vodka).
I bought overpriced Wi-Fi (£21) and managed to finish off a little freelance work too and just spend far too much time internetting which I might well do on a usual Saturday except I'd do it from the comfort of my duvet and then my husband would come home to schnuggle me (and then some) after he finishes work.
I mean I dread to think what first-class food is like as this was pretty epic – because they also have beds. Those reclining kind. And the little pods are private One day, life, one day!
This was also my first flight ever where I watched zero television. I was on the exit row so the TV had to be extracted from the armrest and I decided I was far too tired to bother.
Atlanta to Tallahassee
So I had that nice, pleasant 9.5-hour flight to the States. It was long and I’d woken up at 6 am that day so I could have a leisurely morning before my former personal trainer and amazing, beautiful, generous friend Nicola came to pick me up around 10 am that morning, so I was tired but all was okay.
Atlanta Airport was a little confusing but there were plenty of people to help and get you to where you wanted to go.
I met a lovely Texan girl named Farah at the baggage carousel and we were going to the same terminal to catch our connecting flights and we spent a lovely couple of hours chatting before she had to go. We even navigated dropping our bags off and getting the train together. Farah, a beautiful, sweet person who was a few years younger than me, had flown to Manchester to visit her English boyfriend who lived in Chester (I think they’d met online).
I, on the other hand, had a total of a FIVE-hour layover in Atlanta before my Florida flight and I thought I’d have to pull my hair out with exhaustion. I was waiting to get a flight just five minutes shy of midnight.
Once Farah was gone, I wandered around the airport listening to my audiobook of Lessons in Chemistry and trying not to break down (figuratively). I’d had a total of maybe a twenty-minute fretful nap on the plane so by this point I was in full-on Zombie mode. And then I had a forty-minute flight plus an hour drive home.
I am getting to a point. Bear with me. Long story long!
Finally, the flight time had arrived and I sat miserably on the seats in the corner watching a man with a birdcage with birds in it also probably boarding this flight. I’d never seen such a menagerie of pets at an airport. Earlier in the night, I saw a kitten in the bathroom (with its owner).
Then, the Delta gate flight desk person announced about fifty categories of people to board the flight, which I felt was total overkill for a small plane and a short flight. I was very surprised that the plane was so packed for a random Saturday night.
And it made me realise that despite the fact I am part American, Americans have to feel important.
“Delta would like to welcome all the first class passengers...” or some such variation.
“Delta would now like to ask families with children…”
“Delta would next like to invite active duty military members (thank you for your service)...”
“Next, we want our premium super gold card members…”
“How about the people who have flown six times internally this year to Seattle…”
The categories seemed to get increasingly laughable/absurd as per my tired and cheesed-off brain.
“...and now zone two passengers.”
How “low class” would you feel if you were zone three?
There were lots of the usual grumpy Atlanta staff but also some very ridiculously over-friendly shiny, cheery, guardian-angel bollocksy people too. Normally, I’d be all for the wholesome people stuff but not when I was approaching 24 hours of no sleep. This is what makes me question having a child. I really cannot function without sleep and neither can Michael. And I’d like to think at middle age, I’ve become quite a kind, zen, calm person, but lack-of-sleep me reverts back to “toxic, grumpy bitch.”
Thankfully, on the flight I sat in between two beautiful Asian women. One who was giving FSU student vibes and another businesswoman/impeccably dressed vibes. Both of whom were uninterested in speaking to me – which was absolutely fine by me. Thank goodness. I charged my phone as there was an actual UK plug (hallelujah!) and promptly fell asleep. I hope I did not snore.
But my point of the post… (I think?)
How these arseholes disembarked…
We arrive in Tallahassee “coming in hot” (sing that song in your head, see above) because the pilot was not about slowing down before we practically bounced off the runway. He does not have time for that (Julia Garner as Anna Delvey voice).
Then, the dickheads at the back of the plane decide they are too busy and important to wait to disembark in a logical fucking way. They were probably passengers in one of the fifty categories or alternatively, they were pissed off they were not singled out for special treatment over the intercom.
For anyone who has been on flights with English people travelling to “quite nice” holiday locations (I’m not talking about the Ibiza booze fests or English football fans abroad), English people generally let the plane empty logically. From the front and snaking back from row to row, left to right, and people politely being English, “no, you go ahead”, “oh thank you”, “do you want me to help you with your case?” That sort of thing. They wait patiently and Britishly even if there’s always that set of people who take far too long.
I was shocked – but maybe not surprised – to learn that Tallahhasse people (or wherever these people are from) do not get off a plane this way. The people at the back get up as fast as possible to bull their way to the front. Of course, everyone knows that if all the selfish kind of Americans are doing this, this causes a clusterfuck and just makes everyone else’s wait longer. Not that these people care. They are more important than everyone else and have somewhere to be.
I swear it was the longest time it’s ever taken to get off a plane.
Thankfully, that bullshit was made up for by the fact that the Tallahassee airport is like an empty mall. It was so empty that I was very confused. I don’t even think there was passport control. I saw Mum and Hannah waiting at the end of the hallway. Was I going wrong? Why hadn’t I collected my suitcase yet? Did I get through customs without even knowing it?
Nope, you walk almost to the exit doors of the airport and you can just collect your suitcase relatively easily right by the doors.
I decided to go to the toilet whilst waiting for the suitcase to come out and I had another American surprise I’d totally managed to trama-block in my five years’ absence: the gaps around the loo doors. I really did not miss someone watching me piss via creeper holes.
Welcome to America!
Today is my mother’s 60th birthday!
Happy birthday, Mum! Hannah, Lamar, and I are all off work today to celebrate with her, so we are going over to the Florida Gulf for lunch.
Check out my previous present day snippet.
Read my latest post in my regularly scheduled content.
If you’ve lived in the UK, Europe, or abroad, what are some stark differences you are always surprised about when returning back to the US? Also, do you agree with Michael that Die Hard is a Christmas film (or are you wrong)?
I've been mulling over this for a couple of days, heh. I also find the bathroom stall thing to be annoying here in the US! I found that public bathrooms overseas were in general just cleaner and more private than US public bathrooms. I also liked in Australia that they had the two different flush buttons, one that uses less water for the *ahem* lighter potty uses and the other with more water for the more substantial potty uses. It also felt to me like there is a better work-life balance overseas. Most stores aren't open at all hours, and people don't expect them to be. It wasn't as convenient as I was used to in the US, but I think it's healthier for everyone. Finally, the amount of stuff/options in stores: there just isn't as huge a selection, so it's actually easier to make a decision on what to buy. Sometimes I missed the variety of options from the US, but it also didn't feel as overwhelming.
I only recently watched Die Hard, and I can definitely see the argument that it's a Christmas film. It's not really on the top of my list to watch at Christmas-time, but I can understand the argument. :)