I have to come clean about travel. I need someone to book the flight, make sure the passport is together and that we are at the right gate.
Maybe it is some undiscovered trait of my dyslexia or maybe I am just not paying attention.
When travelling on my own I am paralysed by fear until sat in the seat of the train or plane in motion and no staff member has asked me to move on. I still don't really believe I'll get there until I am on the way home.
Eight years ago my dear friend Clare booked the whole trip to Poland that ended in me meeting "super-cool wife."
A group of us were going to Krakow for the weekend and I was going a week ahead to work on a winter language camp.
The journey to the camp was a flight to Katowice, bus to Krakow, bus to Wadowice (where Pope John Paul II was born) and then a local bus to the village where the camp was.
I was petrified and spent about £50 calling Clare at every stage of the journey sounding like a Peter Sellers character would if he accidentally switched movies from the Pink Panther to the Matrix and needed help getting round.
The main station in Krakow has since been rebuilt and lost all it's chaotic unmanaged charm. It is like smaller version of Westfield in Stratford London. At the time there were wooden signs on old buses that would have formed no order if I could understand Polish and had even less as I could only just about cope with travel instructions written in English.
I was still at the stage where I thought everyone who was not English was ready to send me in the wrong direction or charge me double. (Being married to someone from another country has calmed this dick-head paranoia). I was expecting to end up in the wrong place and never be seen again.
Where Clare left off Super Cool Wife picked up, she is super organised, and gets us to the right place and the right time.
Me? I am worried I'll miss some special code and be turned away at the gate, if I make the gate that is. When I look at the boards in airports I go cross eyed and look for the best place to buy a coffee, hoping that some force of nature will teleport me to the right place.
Now there is an idea.
I was still at the stage where I thought everyone who was not English was ready to send me in the wrong direction or charge me double. (Being married to someone from another country has calmed this dick-head paranoia). I was expecting to end up in the wrong place and never be seen again.
Where Clare left off Super Cool Wife picked up, she is super organised, and gets us to the right place and the right time.
Me? I am worried I'll miss some special code and be turned away at the gate, if I make the gate that is. When I look at the boards in airports I go cross eyed and look for the best place to buy a coffee, hoping that some force of nature will teleport me to the right place.
Now there is an idea.
