That's two triumphant returns. The first one was of course my return to Manchester, England. A return that was generally deemed to have been fairly triumphant by all those polled.
There were of course small issues that hampered me slightly. One of which was that many of my friends saw me for the first time at a mutual friends wedding. For some reason everyone seemed to be paying the Bride and Groom a lot of attention and the photographer who I had assumed was there for me, spent most of his time taking pictures of the newly married couple.
Despite this insult I had a fantastic day and even managed to forget that the very next morning I was off to the airport to fly back to Korea, hungover and facing a new nightmarish schedule of teaching.
My alarm woke me.
It was the next morning. I had to fly back to Korea, hungover and facing a new nightmarish schedule of teaching.
I packed quickly, just the essentials really. Trousers, Shoes, Wash Bag, Limes, Underwear, Cheddar...
The limes were for Little Spoon. She eats them with salt. She is a freak. She also eats apples with salt, but Korea has plenty of apples but not a lime to be found. The cheddar was for me. I am not a freak. I eat cheddar with bread and grated onto pasta.
My adoring family sped me to the airport with plenty of time to spare and after checking in, I had some time to kill, so I headed for the shops. At this point something happened. Nobody is really sure what. I certainly don't know and as nobody else I know was there, it seems to safe to say that nobody is really sure.
Whatever happened, I lost some time and never got it back again.
As I queued to buy a bottle of nicely chilled Ribena I heard one of the announcements for those idiotic passengers who are holding up their flight by not being on the plane. Morons. I say delay the plane and let the cretin get on and then at 10,000 feet throw the worthless sack of excrement out of the emergency exit to plunge to a long overdue death.
I was almost at the front of the queue, the only person ahead was some impossibly wizened old woman buying a magazine I couldn't quite decipher; Coffins Monthly or something no doubt. The bell sounded for a repeat of the late passenger announcement. I shook my head with disgust...
"This is the final call for passenger M.Roberts, repeat the final call for passenger M.Roberts, the gate will be closing now."
The idiots name rang a bell. It was a huge bell and it was ringing very loudly indeed. Oh fuck. I hurled my Ribena at the prune like woman and ran. In hindsight I could have just put the bottle down and ran, but at the time throwing it seemed the right thing to do.
Now I was sprinting. It had been warm, so my jacket was under one arm and my rucksack of assorted gadgets and books for the flight was over the other shoulder. I refused to allow these hinderances to slow me down. I tore through Manchester airport like Usain Bolt.
As I sped by, I would catch glimpses of stunned faces, frozen in shock at the speeds I was reaching. Perhaps they thought I was Usain Bolt. It would have been an easy mistake to make; I caught a reflection of myself in a mirror and sure enough I looked like him. Yes I was shorter, whiter and he doesn't usually run with a folded up jacket and rucksack...
But the pace was there.
I made my flight. It was only a quick one to Amsterdam before a change, but long enough to get glowering looks from all the other passengers.
The next flight was far more sedate but irritating in itself. First of all I had people sat next to me. I've never been a big fan of people and within 10 minutes of sitting down one of these obnoxious scumbags had spoken to me quite uninvited...
"Hello, sorry. Excuse a me please. Sorry"
He wanted to go to the toilet. Should have gone before we left shouldn't you? Still it was to be a ten hour flight, but heaven help him if he decided he needed to go again at any point. Everyone around me was Korean, but the captain announced that the languages spoken by the staff on board were...
"English, Korean, Dutch, Russian, Mongolian and German".
Mongolian? Do Mongolians even speak Mongolian? Apparently they do. I wondered if there were any Mongolians onboard. Possibly sat next to a German. I could envisage it now, the two trading war stories, bragging about their genocidal histories. It made me sick.
Thank God I came from a nation who had never started wars or ransacked nations for their wealth and resources. I ordered some English breakfast tea from an airhostess who could possibly have been Mongolian but if she was, she wasn't letting on.
I idled away the flight imagining my second triumphant return. The return to Korea. I was to meet Little Spoon, Chocolate Orange and Rudeboy Yatesy in Seoul. They had been running a half marathon. Wait until I told them about my sprint in Manchester Airport, they would LOVE that story. They would probably be quite impressed too, as I'd imagine I was hitting speeds that they did not get close to during their little mid morning run around Seoul.
Last thing to do before I landed was fill in my declaration on anything illegal I might be bringing in. Guns? Not this time. Drugs? Nope. Endangered animals? Nah. Fruits or Livestock products? No...erm...hang on.
I had a bag of limes and two blocks of cheddar cheese. Extra strong cheddar cheese too. I scrutinised the form.
"Maximum Penalty for false declaration, FIVE YEARS in prison".
Oh fiddlesticks.
Imagine if I got five years in prison?! That would be a quite untriumphant return. And "untriumphant" is not even a real word, but it would be it, if I went to prison. Five years in jail would put a huge dampener on my return to Korea and it would also do my long term prospects of being an underworld boss no help at all.
Imagine years from now if I was in a seedy bar talking to other career criminals about my past...
"I did five years in the joint motherfucker"
Because I see my criminal life based mainly in America.
One of the crime bosses would undoubtebly ask what I went in for? What would I say?
"Erm...smuggling....yeah, that's right homie, one whole bag and two blocks of the extra strong shit; I came in with the Mongolians"
Maybe I could pull it off. However it would not be necessary as I got through customs undetected, a free man and still with my contraband intact.
I went to meet my friends, and they were there, including Chess Champ and Dubs. It was in the end a most triumphant return.
