Pig Pens‘She would have loved this’…
FRINGE PIG BLOG ONE
It’s one week until I head to Edinburgh for the Fringe and already I can’t stop thinking about the mammoth flight it’s going to take to get there. Travelling to Edinburgh from New Zealand takes such a long time that I’m actually confident I might finish a book for the first time this year. It’s such a long flight that I might even learn the person sitting next to me’s name. I expand in the air, ankles first then up my whole legs… I’m pretty sure at the end of the flight I will look like the Trump Balloon baby.
That’s why you should please be kind to any New Zealand acts you meet, we travel so far and spend so much money that we do feel little bit silly when we flyer next to students who’ve just taken the train up to do their “Macbeth but they’re Zombies” play as a bit of a summer holiday.
The last time I made the flight I was blessed with my only ever business class flight, but only for the first leg from Auckland to Sydney. It wasn’t through legitimate means either, I was just lucky friend’s mum was at the check in desk.
I was super stoked, I was still studying at the time, and as I looked around the people all in suits around me I felt like I was making a very bold statement in my “flight pants” (Read: Toy Story Pyjamas). But I wasn’t the only first timer – another biz-class-virgin was sitting right next to me. But the story of how he ended up on business class was a little more full on than mine.
He looked at my pants and said “first time?” (I don’t know what gave it away) And then added “Mine too”. He then proceeded to tell me why he was on business class: he was visiting his son in Perth, as he did every year, but this was the first year since his wife had passed away, and he’d used the money that would normally pay for her ticket for his own upgrade.
He dropped this information onto me before take-off. I’d barely sat down, and I’d only had time to down about three champagnes at this point. I appreciate that his life had changed and he’d decided to treat himself to make things easier, I just wish he hadn’t treated me with that information. Additionally, I wish he hadn’t altered my experience of every single benefit of business class, from the free newspaper to the food to the blanket and pillow, by saying “she would have loved this”.
I guess what I want this blog’s main message to be is I want whoever is my significant other at the time of my death – please spend any money you get on giving me a lavish as hell funeral, instead of using it to get yourself into business class.
Who needs business class anyway – I met my boyfriend on a 6.30am flight on New Zealand’s worst airline. But for that story… you’ll have to come and see my show.
See Eli Matthewson perform in his show The Year of Magical F*cking at Underbelly George Square, The Wee Coo between 1st and 27th August (not 13th). Tickets and more information: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/eli-matthewson-the-year-of-magical-f-cking