October 2021.
It’s not often that your flight plans align with a world-shaking geopolitical event, but we managed it in September 2001. Our plan — after joining the Queensberry contingent at the WPPI show in Las Vegas — was to host a round of seminars in Canada, England and Ireland, and to follow that up with a side trip to Turkey. But along the way those four planes took down the Twin Towers, smashed into the Pentagon and crashed into the Pennsylvanian countryside… ~Ian
Well, it’s the last time we leave the country with a brand new computer and an untested e-mail connection. I won’t bore you with the details, but thank you to the Jewish Mother and the others who’ve wondered how we’ve been. Well, we’ve been absolutely great. Just got the coming-back cough, that’s all, and this time my digestive tract came through unscathed.
And you may — or may not — be pleased to know that I’ve been able to compose this dispatch ready to send as soon as we got home. I just had to get the Queensberry Newsletter done first.
And a big Hi to y’all who don’t believe in bulk e-mails. How ARE things in
the 20th century? To unsubscribe…
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It’s too bad that the last experiences of the trip are the freshest in one’s mind, because our last experience was the Ambassador Hotel in the Singapore transit lounge.
We’d booked a room for nine hours between planes, and between leaving Istanbul and arriving in Singapore Heather had pretty much changed from being a load-bearer into a load. On the other hand I’d slept like a log before leaving, and was in that limbo where you know you’re gonna feel like crap in another 24 hours —but for now your body is as twitchy as an amoeba.
So Heather crashed without difficulty at the Ambassador, but I had to put myself to sleep with Anna Karenina. Which reminds me, the worst thing about traveling is not being able to get up in the middle of the night and read a book on the couch with the cats.
Our hotel room was designed to torture would-be sleepers. First, the synthetic sheets rustled like Princess Kitty’s petticoats at the slightest movement. I had to lie without breathing while Heather went to sleep.
Second, when my head did hit the pillow I had one of those Proust moments. You remember, when Proust bit into a biscuit and the taste and smell brought his whole childhood flooding back? Well, when my head (my nose, to be more specific) hit the sheets, all India flooded in. India, where the jam tastes like boiled down raspberry ice blocks and the first defence against illness and death is industrial strength disinfectant.
Those rustling bloody sheets hadn’t seen the sun since the terminal was built, and the water they’d been washed in hadn’t been changed too often either — they’d just added more carbolic to make sure they were clinically safe.
Worst of all, the acoustics had been cunningly designed so that every murmur, every fiddle with a key, every clunk of the lock to a neighbouring room sounded like someone dropping a coin and murmuring “shit” in an empty mosque.
Actually, Changi was pretty horrible, by and large. Given my complete computer melt-down I didn’t feel competent to buy so much as a mouse pad in the electronic stores. There was nothing else to do except eat dreadful food or sit around and ponder the fact that the only way not to resent all those Asian folk (poorer than us the first time we came here), was to work on ways NZ could make itself a little wealthier. By departure time, I’d turned from a load-bearer into a load myself, but Heather had slept well.
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Of course the drama of September 11 over-shadowed everything else while we
were away. I don’t think we’ll ever forget going downstairs for breakfast at
the Sheraton in Edmonton, Alberta, and seeing this roomful of people gawping at the
big screen TV, and the amazing sight of the second plane flying into those
buildings. Even Tom Clancy restricted himself to one plane flying into one
building — the Capitol in his case.
It took just a few minutes for us to think of Anna and Jean in Manhattan. And later Tim, who we thought actually worked in the World Trade Center. We rang the Adamses at I think 4.00am NZT to find Paul already on the job and the news that Anna was safe.
Wellington spent the entire day gawping at CNN re-running the same horrifying images over and over again — and the occasional piece of new footage with staggering impact.
Of course the dust hadn’t settled — literally — before the chatterers were out saying, wasn’t it about time the Americans asked themselves why everyone hates them so much? Sufficiently like the Judge telling the rape victim that maybe she was asking for it to turn my stomach. Was this the time to lecture a poor girl about the length of her skirt?
There was an article in The Times asking that question — and suggesting that the terrorists don’t hate Americans for their shortcomings (their insularity, their flag waving, the bad food on the Interstates), they hate them for their strengths. Their success, their pluralism, their freedom, their refusal to think of themselves as victims, the simple fact that, as Ray says, they’re the dominant culture, and they’re rich.
The Times suggested it’s more fruitful to ask, why do WE hate them so much? Same reason, but less reasonable.
Like the mad mullahs, so much of our world-view is in conflict with American success. We hate them for their strengths and we fool ourselves by comparing their oiks with our best. Comparing our universities not with Yale but with Hamburger U. American nuts are nuts, whereas English nuts are eccentric. We and the mullahs bitch about the Americans while our kids say “Whatever” — and migrate there.
So I forgive them their insularity and their flag waving — but not the bad food on the Interstate.
The old empires had to travel to conquer. The Americans didn’t need to — the world de-camped and came to them.
It’s ironic that the really insular places tend to be continents, like America. The least insular places are islands — like New Zealand — and bits of islands, like Scotland.
Of COURSE we know more about them than they know about us. The place is big enough not to need foreign countries. If they want foreign experiences they can go to California — much cleaner than New York, according to Woody Allen, because they don’t throw their garbage out, they make it into television.
And what’s so bad about Old Glory and “My fellow Americans”? Take any sentence with “My fellow Americans”, and any picture with Old Glory, make a few substitutions and what have you got?
That’s right — and if we can forgive the world’s second-worst flag-wavers, and we should, surely we can forgive the worst as well. And again, isn’t the thing that really pisses us off about Australia their success?
Anyway…
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The flight from LA to Edmonton had been uneventful. All we saw of Los Angeles was our terminal at LAX, with the most astonishingly slack security and food to match. Anyone with or without a cardboard box cutter who wanted a really bad burger could get right up to the Gate.
Even after the attack, security seemed to be a joke. Coming into the UK Heather’s British passport wasn’t even opened — but of course she’s got an honest face. The Customs chap said to her, “I’ll bet you’re looking forward to a decent cuppa tea, eh love?”
A lot of people asked us if we’d packed our own bags, which was a great comfort, as was the sight of security staff chatting to each other while baggage flooded past their scanners. We saw one souvenir paper knife and one corkscrew yielded up, but my lethal little scissors were left untouched in my carry-on (but then I’ve got an honest face).
Of course when we got back to good old NZ, things changed. The nice man wouldn’t believe our stuff was made here and refused to let us take our sample albums away with us. No-one anywhere had asked us why we had 110 kg of luggage — not even the airlines — or why I was carrying an album case that looked like it was designed to hold an Uzi. So with assorted terrorists, Afghani refugees, Chinese herbalists, tiger penis traders and drug smugglers all looking on, we suffered the embarrassment of spreading our dirty undies round the customs area as we re-packed to leave the albums in bond. The stink when we opened the suitcase lids may have given the drug smugglers a hint as to how to confuse the sniffer dogs — just go to Istanbul for a week and don’t change your clothes — but that’s the cops’ problem, not ours.
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The Canadian conference was a great do. Malcolm got a standing ovation from a big crowd, Chris and Wynna took out first and second with their Queensberry albums, and we were happy to bathe in the reflected glory.
But next morning was 9/11, or 11 September in the old notation.
The Canadians sure know how to party, but the attack gave them pause. Only pause, mind you. After sober reflection — should they or should they not abandon the Awards Dinner in solidarity and sympathy with the Americans? — they decided the right response was to proceed. This was the only conference we’ve been to where they toasted the crown, absent and departed friends, the office of the president of the United States and various others I’ve forgotten — fortunately all in one hit. The Canadians are serious folks who touch all bases when they aren’t partying. Actually, they seem to touch all bases when they are partying, too.
Ours must have been among the first flights to get out of Canada after air travel was brought to a halt by the attacks. There were huge lines at security in Edmonton. No-one thought we would make our connection in Toronto but the alternative was to wait 2-3 days and miss our seminar commitments — so we took our chances, and also, in the event, set a world speed record by changing terminals in less than ten minutes and getting to our departure gate in time. In Manchester we discovered that all our luggage had done the same. God knows how.
Similarly, ours must have been on one of the first flights into Heathrow. This wasn’t the first terrorist attack of course, not even the first attack on the World Trade Center. You have to wonder what the long term response will be … but maybe that Customs fellow had it right — keep calm and carry on rather than hide under the bed. Stephen and Adrienne wanted us to abandon our trip to Turkey (secular, but Muslim all the same) but we decided to carry on and certainly didn’t regret it — and here we are again, safe and sound.
When we got home Stephen told me that soon after the attack he’d been on the phone to one of our US customers. He (rather clumsily, he felt) had tried to reassure this person that, by and large, the rest of the world appeared to be on America’s side. He felt the need to tell her this because American TV seemed to him so inward-looking that she mightn’t realise it.
The result was that she composed a two page email to him apologising for being American.
That seems sad to me, but heartening. And they tell me bin Laden is working on his own mea culpa as I write.