upgrade

My day begins with hectic quasi-veterinary activity. I make a vet appointment for Idji with the bung leg for 9:45 to appease my mother. But before the vet visit I enter a pet warehouse—there are no pet shops any more—and purchase six months’ worth of dog flea treatments for $77. Yesterday I bath the wee boy and uncover an infestation on the back of his neck.

As if he knows what’s coming, Idji the ginger moggie disappears. I track him down under the house but can’t lure him out. I crawl the length of the house through curtains of cobwebs, past mouldering rat bodies, stuff the cat under an arm, scrabble back to the outside world.

The cat squirms and opposes the vet’s blandishments. She says she has a ginger boy of her own, can’t find a cause for his bung leg, shoots him up with antibiotics in case another cat bit him—no evidence, advises rest. So, I learn nothing, fork out $132, end up doing what I was doing.

My good woman and I meet at the bank at 11 to explore income and mortgage protection. Like me, she thinks this is the bank trying to scare a bit more money out of us. I do, however, leave the bank with a cheque for my new car in my pocket: the dealer emails me this morning to say I can pick it up from 4pm Friday.

All this leaves little time to finish packing and head for the airport again. I drop the JRT at my good woman’s, arrive at Europcar’s long-term car park on the appointed stroke of three, punch my reference number into Qantas’s boarding pass dispenser at 3:15. It rejects me, tells me to proceed to the baggage counter.

A young Turkish woman asks if I’m OK to fly on the 4:30 instead of 4:00 flight: they’ve run out of seats. The pay-off is I go business class. A split-second’s memory of my return from Perth, tiny seat, jostled by big men’s elbows on both sides, and I agree. I have misgivings, don’t fancy being thought of as a wanker by people like me as they shuffle past into cattle class.

In business class I’m offered a drink before the plane so much as backs away from the airbridge. The drink comes in a glass flute rather than a plastic beaker. Afternoon tea is a cut above: heated sourdough bread, sun-dried tomatoes, proper cutlery, a damask napkin.

The seat is comfortable; I stretch the legs. Flight attendants buzz round us, address me by name even though I’ve been hijacked from another flight. At journey’s end I’m off the plane before the afterburners stop whining and the first taxi on the rank is mine.

Go, an Indian, drives me to the Novotel at Brighton-Le-Sands. The foyer reeks of sandalwood. Sam, the spunky young thing behind the reception desk, tells me that my breakfast and all my needs are catered for. She hands me my e-key for room 914.

“We’ve upgraded you,” she says.

  

Rock on.