Page 1 of Wish You Were Here
Ben
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that when flying, you cannot talk to the person next to you on the plane until about ten minutes before landing.
I have spent the past eight hours sitting next to a lady: American, middle-aged, brunette, glasses, hasn’t once gone to the toilet, is a considerate flyer, doesn’t drink alcohol and only ate the salad from her in-flight meal.
I know more details about the woman next to me than I know about most people at my work and we haven’t even spoken.
As we come into land at Sydney Airport, the blinding morning sun glaring through the small, round plane window, the remnants of flying from Singapore strewn across the plane, I look across at her and she looks back at me.
We smile. We can talk now because we’re about to land.
The conversation can only last ten minutes or hopefully less, and we both know exactly what we’ll talk about. This is polite travel chit-chat.
‘What are you doing in Sydney?’ I ask.
‘Business. You?’
What am I doing in Sydney? Business? Pleasure?
‘Actually, I’m not really sure,’ I say, and her face that had expected something far more mundane because let’s face it, there are only a few acceptable answers to that question, loses its structure and I get a glimpse of the sort of expression she probably keeps for people far more acquainted with her than me.
She lets her guard down because why would anyone travel across the world on the plane with no idea why?
It’s insane to comprehend that anyone would make this trip for no apparent reason, and yet here I am – I’m an enigma!
I have not only stepped outside of my own comfort zone but also societies.
‘Oh,’ she says after a moment.
‘I know.’
‘Then, I suppose, good luck?’
‘Thank you,’ I say, and then she gets back to organising her things for landing, the flight crew do their last walk-through, checking if our seats are in the upright position, everyone gets ready to land and I sit back in my seat and look out of the window.
Sydney looks stunning below me. I can see small coves with beaches and then the iconic Harbour Bridge in the distance, and it feels incredible that a day ago I was in leaden-grey, wintery London, pondering the delicate intricacies of my life and now I am in Australia, and maybe about to change everything.
What am I doing in Sydney? There is only one word to answer this particular question, and it’s the oldest, most cliché complication that has troubled man since the beginning of time: Love, of course.