The Crafter's Apprentice

I have arrived.  I am currently sitting in my hotel room in Tunisia.  It has been a long day.


My taxi arrived at 7:30am to take me from Nottingham to London Heathrow.  In rush hour.

They have changed airports since I was last at one and you have to do some self-scanning of your passport.  I couldn't get it to work. 


I took so long choosing some perfume that I didn't have time to get anything to eat before getting on my quite crowded flight.

I was mistaken for a French person on the flight.  Read into this what you will.


The London-Paris flight was delayed and I arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport 30 minutes before my next flight left.  It's a very big airport.  Very big.  It does not believe in informing its visitors.  I would estimate my walk from terminal 2E to terminal 2F to have been over a mile.  At high speed.  I did discover the only place you can smoke in the dreaded-by-smokers-airport, and couldn't stop as I was late. 

A French security officer shouted at me for having a nearly-empty bottle of diet Coke.  I had to throw it away and buy a new one.  French diet Coke is horrible.  It's very sweet.


My Paris-Tunis flight was delayed.  

I opened the little carton of milk for my coffee on the plane and it went all over the air steward's leg.  The back of his trousers.  He didn't notice.  I didn't tell him.  A better person than me would have.


I was mistaken for a French person.

The man next to me decided I didn't need the entire width of my seat and that his elbow would be particularly comfortable digging into my ribs.  For the entire 2 and a half hour flight.


The toilets at Tunis airport do not sport toilet paper.  Really.

The queue for immigration was incredibly long.  Especially as I was desperate to go to the toilet.  


It's bloody raining.  And windy.  Lightning, the lot.  They're having a heatwave in the UK.  You can all thank me as clearly I'm jinxed.


I got to my hotel, came up to the room and then decided to go down to dinner.  I went downstairs and chickened out of eating alone.  Me.  The person who moved to a foreign country alone.  The person who's been travelling alone - and ate out every night.  I'm a wimp.

I ordered room service.  She asked if I wanted my steak well-done or medium-well-done, clearly didn't mistake me for a French person then.  I couldn't think of the word for rare so said "avec du singe".


Singe means monkey.


She understood anyway and sent me a barely cooked steak.  Tunisia is a muslim country.  The meat is Halal.  Blood in meat is a very bad thing.  Way to go with the cultural sensitivity Wendy.


I can't find anything on TV, but I'm a bit lonely so need it for company.  I just watched 2 and a Half Men.  With subtitles.  I don't recommend it.  With or without subtitles.

Blogger, an off-shoot of Google, has decided that we have to use Google Chrome.  I refuse.
  

Well that will teach me to brag.


Help cheer me up, enter my competition.  That link might not work as it's put a .fr at the end of my blog address.  I'm not even in France, I'm in Africa.  It's the next post down.


Off to drown my sorrows with diet Coke, disgusting steak and foul potatoes and some bad American TV with Arabic subtitles.  It's either that or Arab X-Factor, in Arabic, with Simon Cowell, just dubbed.


Who did I upset??