travel by plane (not economy class anyway); by the time my DUFF trip
was over those suspicions had hardened into certainty.
While at the counter booking my seat Robin had told the QANTAS
man that I had a wheelchair. Somewhere along the line they decided he
meant I needed one, This led to the hilarious spectacle of a ground-staff
person pushing me along in a most unwieldy airport chair with one arm
while using the other to drag along behind him my own chair, which he
could have controlled quite easily had he not folded it up first. Ours is
not to reason why ... Actually they looked after me fairly well, giving
me the YPTA treatment which is also extended, I later found, to dotty
old ladies and anyone who looks as though they might clog the pipeline.
I discovered that the thing about very long plane trips is not so much
jet lag as the fact that you don’t sleep at all. Even if you can drop off
on a bed of nails you never get more than two hours peace. They keep
feeding you, or stopping, or waking you up to fill out forms. Before landing
in Honolulu we were given a long lecture on how to complete the
Immigration forms, It was just like school; if you made a mistake you would
be sent to the back of the queue and that would hold everyone up and
the other passengers would not like you. The woman next to me, a computer
systems analyst regarded all this as an insult to her intelligence. In due
course she was sent to the back of the queue for having copied my passport
number onto her form (it was after midnight...). I was left on the plane
while they all went off in a little bus, and was grilled through a walkie-
talkie brought on board by a tough-looking character who appeared to have
escaped from HAWAII FIVE-O. As we took off from Honolulu the sun was
rising, and the view of the islands was well worth the effort of prising
my eyes open – I shut them again when confronted by a glass of guava
juice which looked like pink Clag, and tastes much as it looks!
On arrival in San Francisco transit passengers were forbidden to get
off "because of congestion". That proved to be one of those polite airline
euphemisms. I left the plane last, was put into an airport wheelchair and
left with two harrassed but pleasant ground hostesses. I was luckier than
I knew. Everyone else was literally standing at the bottom of the stairs;
no seats, no toilets, no air-conditioning. Although we had completed
Immigration formalities, you go through Immigration to Customs, and
Immigration will only deal with one flight at a time, (One Aussie, a first-
class passenger marked by the staff as stroppy, escaped and was found
wandering in Customs – the hapless ground hosties were duly roasted.) The
source of the holdup was the previous China Air Lines flight. To quote
the porter who took me down to Immigration (where I sat in solitary and
rather sheepish splendour waiting for my wretched fellow-countrymen)
"De China people, dey lie." (No kidding, that was exactly what he said.)
CAL got in at 12.45, one hour late, We got in at 1.00 on the dot. At 3.00
they started letting QANTAS passengers into customs. Too bad for people
with connecting flights. At least they were let through to Immigration after
most of the Chinese had moved on. In the meantime I had been having
an absorbing conversation with a nice Immigration man who attempt.ed
to explain the situation – according to him CAL passengers not only lie
to Customs (smuggling being a sort of national sport) they also may have
TB and/or intentions of staying illegally – and then told me all about the
recent STAR TREK convention. He then kindly pushed me through into
Customs where I sat in a pleasant breeze watching all (and I mean all)

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