Ellie Rose McKee

This evening, I’ve been clearing out some paperwork from my home office. So much of what I found was so old, I’d forgotten ever writing it. Alongside my long-abandoned novel, and a partial script for a random radio play, and drafted children’s book, and doodles for a Christian colouring book were six loose pages.

Two of the loose pages outline a story I will share here next week, and the other four (titled ‘Travel Awkwardness’) form what I’m guessing was supposed to become a blog post. Well, today, I’m going to make that blog post a reality, because it’s (in my opinion) so cringingly funny I just have to share. Below, therefore, is a direct transcription.

I travel fairly regularly – not very far most of the time, but usually just enough that I require a small wheeled suitcase. Other than a suitcase, though, I travel alone, and this comes with a few issues that couples or groups would never experience. Like, when sitting in an airport for a few hours – waiting for a flight, obviously – a common thing to do is to read and/or help yourself to a caffeinated beverage. This is fairly standard, regardless of who you’re with (/not with), but the difference is what happens after this period of sitting but before the period of getting up to sit in a big metal bird: one goes to the bathroom.

Going to the bathroom is not as simple as it sounds, for people with other people. But people without other people have to pack up everything and head to the bathroom with it for fear that it will be stolen (by security guards more likely than actual thieves).

People with people (PWP) can leave their caffeinated beverage half drunk, their magazine open on their table, their suitcase and their toddler behind them for a few brief moments alone to freshen up because – joy of joys – they have a minder.* Meanwhile, I’m getting strange looks reflected in my direction from the lucky “look, free hands!” woman standing by the mirror, taking her sweet time to fix her already perfect hair as I try to squeeze both myself and my case round a tiny cubicle door only to find that, now I’m in, the door won’t shut because me/my suitcase are in the way. Needless to say – it takes some manoeuvring.

As the perfect-haired PWP resumes her coffee/magazine/parenthood I am now faced with the problem of releasing myself [from the space] I’ve just spent the last seven minutes trying to get into. Typically, when I do get out, I discover that – due to the plane being “delayed for unforeseen circumstances” – my pre-flight preparation piss was in vain, as I’ve suddenly got two more hours to kill and will therefore no doubt have to complete the process two more times (a side-effect of all those time-killing caffeinated beverages).

Just recently, I was in Dublin – on my own, of course – and an odd thing happened:

Snoring in toilet.

Unknowledgeable fart.

(Yes, that’s really how it ends.

*There’s an asterisk here in my original notes, but no corresponding footnote. Absolutely no idea what I had been planning to clarify or elaborate on at the end. I was so very good at this!)