From the air, England looks a bit like Kansas or nebraska with smalle fields an more frequent towns. in the plane, I race over the ground like a Titan over a Persian carpet, covering seven leauges with every rapid stride. From this heigt, the countryside is unmoving, as i dance down towards it balacning on first one arm then the other in my spiral. I right myself, and then with nary a bump the plane touches down: first the back wheels and within the heartbeat the front. Teh runway grumbles as the vehical slows to a mortal's pace. My gum has lost its flavour and my ears are popping.
***
Aside from the plane being an hour late because of a weather related delay last night - it was a nice flight to London. As a final send off the Mensa packed us all breakfastes. Breakfasts. Breakfasti. What's the plural of breakfast? So, I was well provided for on the plane and did not have to buy any of the over-priced food from the flight attendants.
The sack lunch they always made us for fild trips consisted of:
*two sandwiches (types varried, no selection, take what you get or trade with a friend, there was usally quite a market trying to get rid of the cicken with lettuce and nothing else)
*a fruit (an orange or an apple depending on what was handy)
*a bag of chips (usually the Italian version of white chedder cheettos, only without the white chedder, or the cheetto-y packaged artificial food goodness)
*some sort of desert (usually these bizare fake-chocolate-covered, oranged-flavored, soggy sponge cake bars that noebody liked)
*a bottle of water
*a can of coke
Breakfast was always:
*sausage (fried in olive oil)
*bacon (really strips of procutto fried in olive oil, which sort of looks like bacon from a distance)
*eggs (allegedly scrambled, but judging by the complaints of the people foolish enough to eat them, not remotly like the American dish of the same name. Olive oil was involved in their production)
*has browns (which looked suspiciously like left-over scalloped potatoes fried in olive oil)
*random flavors of yougurt (not olive oil flavored, but they did make up for it with the coffee and cereal flavors, which you should not under any circumstances actually eat)
*the same four types of creal (coco pufs, rice puffs, frosted flakes with out the frosting which I gues would just be flakes, and granola)
*whatever pastries they felt like putting out (I never had the same filling in my cornetto two days in a row, they one thing they had in common was that they were all covered with enough powdered sugar to blind a persuing ninja team and allow ou to escape#)
*fruit (the same selection offered at all the other meals)
*mineral filled tap water (takes some getting used to, better with ice)
*any of three varriations on orange juice
*some truly awful coffee
*never enough milk to go around, partly due to our love of cereal and partly due to the badness of the coffee (no one was man enough to drink it straight)
If this sounds like a lot to go around, bear in mind that the portions were tiny: the sereal bowles had about the smae carrying capacity as the tea cup I got in Salzburg. The 'plates' which we were supposed to use wee actually sauscers for the tea cups (which the mensa had pressed into service as coffee mugs). If you were foolish enough to try to grab seconds on anything not liquid (except the milk, which was out anyway) or do something radical like take two pastries then you would get the look and emidiatly feel the need to amend your life and take religous orders.
Now, I'm sure the question nagging in the bak of all your minds is 'How did those maniacs in the Mensa combine breakfast with their sack lunches to make everyones last meal?##) Although I good second choice would be 'How did she get here from talking about airplanes?' The answer to the second question is 'Isn't stream of conciousness, however its spelled, fun?' The answer to the 1st question is:
*one sandwich (ham and cheese, no mayo, there never is, allthough the bread apeared to have had a close encounter with some olive oil)
*one muffin (no powdered sugar, am worried about attacks of ninja/gypses, as I have no way to defend myself)
*one apple
*one box of appricot juice
*one can of coke
Arn't the Mensa ladies cute? But what do you expect from a group that made us a desert so big that it could not fit through the door?###
Reporting live from London,
Yami
#You have to watch out for ninjas in Rome, they're quite a menace. Or maybe I mean gypsies are a menace and ninjas are spies from feudal Japan. I get confused on that sometimes. The point is, you don't want either one following you, and you can use the powdred sugar from your pastry to cover your escape.]
## or form Voltron
### not kidding, I have pictures of it, which I'll post when I get the chance, which may not be until I reach Berlin
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