and I'm still waiting for my luggage!!!

Yes - it's true. It's been two packs of ciggies; three bottles of coke light; one yucky tasting shepards pie; two packs of instant noodles; half a bag of breakfast cereal and three days after landing in London town since I saw my big black leather friend...

The long and short of the saga is as follows: So I get out of the plane (which arrives 15 minutes early - reeeeemarkable!!). I jostle with tired and hungry people down long hideously carpeted corridors. I get sandwiched between a little old lady who falls asleep on the travellator and a pink haired teen with a screaming ipod. I make it to the customs queue, and fall behind (horrors) a long line of people fresh out of Lagos. I discover that Heathrow could only spare three customs officers to handle half the African continent and me. "Brilliant!" I tell myself. I square my shoulders. It's all part of the Game. You know - that funny little Game that London plays on everyone. The public transport, national health service and the weather are all in on it as well. You can look at it as a vindictive little conspiracy, or you could *cue music* stick out your chin and grin and say.... oh... The sun will come out tomorrow, so HECK IT!

For the first hour in the queue (YES- an hour!), I didn't mind the roots growing from my feet into the floor. See. there was a little bit of drama to entertain all of us. A passenger and a customs officer got down to a blooming beautiful shouting match. Words, spit and passports flew into the air for a good three minutes. Then truncheons were drawn, expletives shouted and the red faced passenger was cuffed and marched into the customs medical room presumably to be sedated. Ahhh... *cue Eastenders music*... don't we all have a little blood lust in us!? The whole thing was so gratifyingly ugly and so so Essex. Welcome to the United Kingdom!

So I get to the customs officer. He looks me up and down, and asks me why I am in the UK. Fine question my good man! Wondering the same thing meself! So I give him my answer, and he flips through my file of papers, pronounces them fine and then waves me through. Obviously with a pretty Singapore passport and a cutesy certificate from the Law Society, I don't merit the truncheon treatment.

So I run down to the baggage belts. My belt is motionless and everything is quiet. A few bags lie scattered on the floor. No problem! I'll just walk to the BA information counter and find out where it is. Big burly man at the counter smiles at me when I come up to him. He tells me gleefully that all the bags on the belt have been taken off, (see we are very efficient at Heathrow!!!) and oooops - he doesn't know where they are now. Ahhh, but see there seem to be a lot of bags at the end of the hall, and maybe my bag is there. See, sometimes they find bags there that belong to passengers that came in through Heathrow as early as November 2007! Lovely! The Game has definitely picked up in pace.

So I walk up to the mountain of Samsonites and Eminents. What the HELL!!!! Naw-way! I ain't doing this on my own! So I play the helpless woman card. Oh yes - I CAN play the helpless woman card! (Stop smirking! Just because you never saw me do it yet) It takes a lot out of me, but it was that or ...*cue music*... Climb every mountain... ford every stream...

I get two men helping me shuffle through the bags. Half an hour later we realise it's not going to get us anywhere, so I concede defeat, and fill in a very long and tedious form to report misplaced baggage. I hand in the form. Call my mother and tell her the latest, which in turn coaxes her into minor cardiac arrest, which in turn results in fifteen minutes of high decibel nagging ringing in ears. I get a taxi, send out the "All's clear" SMS-es to everyone, get to my service apartment and attempt to sleep...

...TO NO AVAIL! I sleepwalk from HSBC to Vodafone to Boots settling my bank account, getting a mobile phone contract and buying toiletries. Say, is that a piece of rancid ham stuck between my molar and canine? Damn! I need to brush my teeth!. Wait a minute - that's a nice looking pub! Ah well - there's always time for a beer! So I celebrate my arrival in London with a half pint of ale and a Camel light. Nice! The sign of good and debaucherous things to come...

I call the airport after 12 hours. They claim that the bag never arrived in London. It wasn't scanned in London. So it must be in Singapore. Heathrow can't do anything about that, so it's for the Singapore airport to handle it! I point out that this is a BA matter as BA personnel checked in my baggage in Singapore. So BA is responsible, and please don't go shelving responsibility to the airports. They promise to "look into it" and get back to me as soon as they locate the bag.

24 hours later, I receive a call from BA. AHA! ZE BAG IZ FOUND!!!! But where was it all this while. Well, apparently a "Heavily Pregnant Woman" mistook her grey bag for my black one and took it on a little expedition to Coventry before realising that she couldn't open the padlock on it and oh dear - she NEVER padlocked her bag... and why was it black instead of grey... and so whose bag was it???!!! Ahhh... the thought processes of a Heavily Pregnant Woman! The funny thing that BA refused to bring up was that the bag MUST HAVE BEEN SCANNED at the airport in London. So all that bullshit about the bag being still in Singapore was just that - Bullshit!

So, Heavily Pregnant Woman promises to bring my bag back to Heathrow from Coventry the next day, and BA promises to deliver the bag to me as soon as she does this. Heavily Pregnant Woman keeps her promise. BA screws up again. I am told that the bag will be delivered at my place between 8 pm to 10 pm. So I cancel plans to go out for a pint with a friend, and I stay at home... and painfully watch Bridget Jones for the third time courtesy of BBC1. The hours pass quickly, and I realise all too soon that the clock has struck 11, and my bag is still MIA. Lovely! So, I call BA, and listen to elevator music for five minutes before getting an answering machine. Ah well... that will teach me to hope!

And today? Today, I am still waiting for my little black leather friend... Gawd knows where he is at this point, and I can only hope he is happy and intact! Doubtless he will come my way sooner or later, but in the meantime I have already bought several shirts and a whole new set of underwear and practically a duplicate of everything he contains.

Oh - and the latest news from BA just in! Apparently they are on their way to my flat right now to deliver the bag. Well, light a joss stick, hold a rosary, throw me a lucky penny! I just may win the Game and have a change of jeans tonight!
riverman~~~

well greggy you asked for this today...

and so here is the first post. See, it's a typically riverman~~~ thing to do what greggy wants from time to time...

As I sit here at my computer, seven hours from a fourteen hour flight away to what I hope will be a new beginning, I am more and more aware of all I am leaving behind. It has been a remarkable time in Singapore for the riverman~~~, and despite all the bravado and bluster I can muster up at a time like this, I will go mushy and say what I truly mean: I will really miss all of you very very very much lah!!!

Thank you for making all my gigs resounding successes (and pretending so splendidly to appreciate the songs you heard over and over again - you poor poor patient things!). Thank you for the best company I could have ever had at breakfast, lunch and dinner and supper and every meal in between. My waistband attests to all the excesses of we all enjoyed over these many months - but what the heck! It will be a long and cold winter in London town, and I will thank you for cutting down my heating bill for me! Thank you for calling, writing, talking, singing, scolding, pep-talking, encouraging, irritating, pushing and inspiring me the way you have. Thank you for being YOU... the same YOU I hope you stay until we meet again!

Take care of you!


And so the riverman~~~ sails away...