Travel Agent

For some time now, I have been employing the services of a French travel agency that comes highly recommended.  I have a member of staff assigned personally to me, who sees to my every need and books my flights to Singapore every other week or so.  Perks of the Platinum Service to which I have subscribed include meals out, trips to the theatre, small gifts and the washing up done.  Here is my personal travel agent, hard at work in his home environment of Changi Airport (he lives here, in the orchid garden in Terminal 2):

A bit of a looker, I'm sure you'll agree.

Since employing his services in September, my dearest travel agent - Frenchie, I like to call him - has booked for me a holiday in the Mekong Delta, a holiday in Hanoi, return flights from London to Toulouse, countless flights from Saigon to Singapore, numerous nights in the Holiday Inn in Singapore and also the Intercontinental Singapore, tickets to a rather good show, numerous taxis to and from airports and three flights around Australia.  He has never let me down, and for this he has been handsomely rewarded with kind words and hot meals.

Hopefully I'll soon have images to add here of the performance of 'The Rite of Spring' we went to at the Esplanade Theatres on the Bay.  It was awesome and a little stressful, as Stravinsky often is.  I had to take them surreptitiously to avoid getting into trouble with the usher lady.

When I go to Singapore at the weekend, I always take a 5:25pm flight on a Friday, and a 5:35pm flight on a Sunday night.  Always always always.  Without fail.  Imagine my surprise, therefore, when Frenchie opened his laptop in the taxi to the airport (he has a high powered job as well as running his travel agency service and often has to pretend to be busy on his laptop/Blackberry/iPad in order to keep up appearances) and looked at me solemnly.

Frenchie: Emma...
Me: yes?
Frenchie: Emma...

Now Frenchie is French, and as such is normally very romantic (most inappropriate for a travel agent, but I don't mind), and will often spend long periods gazing into my eyes repeating my name in a low, sensuous whisper.  It's all very well and good, but sometimes there are things that need to be done, like feeding the fish, so I often tell him to get on with it rather than murmuring his name back to him in similarly Mediterranean love tones.  I am British, after all and we don't have time for such nonsense.  Occasionally, to help him snap out of it, I ask ridiculous questions like, 'Do you need to poo?' or 'Did you forget to turn off the air conditioning?' or I finish his sentence with things like '...I've discovered you're actually a man', which puts a suitable dampener on the mood and gets more things done.  On this occasion, as a joke, I decided to take the conversation in this direction:

Frenchie: Emma...
Me: yes?
Frenchie: Emma...
Me: have I missed my flight?

Except that Frenchie then nodded, which was a direction I wasn't expecting to take.

I rubbed his leg comfortingly and said nothing.  In a sort of a fluffy daze, I rehearsed the same imaginary conversation that I had with my Head Teacher when I was sitting in Kota Kinabalu Airport at 2:30am hoping that my passport would be returned to me: 'Hello, Head Teacher, I have recklessly taken a weekend flight to an exotic destination knowing full well that I am terrible with flights, passports and general organisation.  I won't be able to do the job I'm paid to do tomorrow because, well, I'm stuck in that exotic destination without a flight or a passport.'  Unprofessional much?

We made it all the way to the airport, with Frenchie so tense that he looked like he really was about to do a big poo, and with me murmuring words of gentle encouragement, a la Helena Bonham Carter as the Queen Mother in 'The King's Speech': 'you're doing marvelously, darling', 'we'll put on a brave face, what?'

At the Singapore Airlines desk, they told us that there was a standby ticket available at 5:35pm (my flight) for a mere £250 one way.  Still as calm as a cucumber and imitating my Windsor accent (I get posh in times of crisis), I said, 'thank you so much for your help.  I wonder, could you tell us if there are any other carriers who offer flights to Saigon this evening?'  It turns out there was, so with Frenchie now apologising profusely, we got on the Skytrain (oooh, space-age) to Terminal 1 and - still on a sort of a I-don't-know-what-the-consequences-of-not-turning-up-to-work-in-the-morning cloud, said, 'Hello, I've just missed my flight - terribly foolish.  I wonder if there is any space on your flight at - I think 7:50pm?'

Turns out there was.  PHEW.  And it cost a darn sight less than Singapore Airlines, too, which was a RELIEF!

Phew!

So I got to stare at this lovely face for an extra three hours whilst I waited for my flight!  Silver linings, hey?