Friday, March 16
Room 707, Star Metro, 10:45
We woke up, most of the packing done, to a final relaxed morning. Having not had the promised email from Finnair about the status of our upgrades, we checked in with our given seats, and resigned ourselves to paying lots of money to put our bags in the cargo hold.
We have breakfast in our room one last time, with toast and hummous, and cheeses, and fresh fruit, and coffee and fruit juices and tea. Irma notices that the bustle outside has dropped to almost nothing, due to the holy status of Friday. I look out of the window at the traffic that remains and take some photographs. The window will not open and so the photograph turns out “interestingly” blurred in parts, with slight reflections from inside the room.
I notice the taxis. Almost all the same Toyota model, they have different coloured roofs but the same beige bodies. So far I have spotted red, yellow, orange, green, and blue.
We will spend an hour by the pool. Irma will swim and, this morning, I won’t. I will have a shower while Irma does some final shopping. At 14:00 we will check out, get in a taxi (with a blue roof), and head to Terminal 1.
We will manage to get first place in the queue to check in, and Irma will ask about our upgrades. This will result in Irma getting seat 3A, and us checking in all our bags as part of her business class allowance. I will still get 36C but I won’t mind at all because I have the aisle seat on the back row.
I will have almost no hand luggage. I will grab a Monocle before we board, and I will spend the flight reading and listening to Philip Glass. The middle aged couple in 36A and 36B will get increasingly excited about each other’s company as the flight progresses, until they are snuggled against each other kissing. I will wonder whether the holiday has tekindled their desire after thirty years of marriage or whether the business meeting in the UAE finally kickstarted the latent office affair. I will refrain from asking.
We will arrive home to discover that the new roof has worked as advertised. All the snow has slid off the roof and then frozen. Miniature mountains surround the house on all sides.
We will climb indoors and unpack.