Holiday Diary Morocco - Chapter Nine - The Last Day

It could be a function of getting older, or trying to keep a better ordered life, but the starts to the days seem more even, more alike. The variations in the days come after Breakfast. I thought that we should be out of the hotel and onto the road for 9.30. Anthony had different ideas where the nearest he got to sharing them was appearing to not want to leave the hotel with any haste. I could get the luggage to the car, sort out the empty water bottles. But he sat in the hotel room browsing The Guardian on his smart phone. 

When he got to the car and was prepared to leave, then he was openly underwhelmed by how we were blocked in from making our exit but poorly parked cars. The car that was the worst offender was a taxi, which Anthony scrapped ever so slightly, trying to get past it. This delayed our exit by ten mins whilst the junior manager who I privately called 'Mr Bon Appetit' for his overuse of the phrase took it upon himself to stop us leaving whilst he tried to report the damage to the taxi driver who he could not get the attention of on the phone. In the midst of. us waiting on of the hotel staff presented Anthony with the scissors he wants rid because they would otherwise be binned at the airport and his smart phone. Evidently he did not realise that he had put it down on the bed when he left the room which took the edge off how the manager of the hotel had detained us with his concern for his reputation as a manager.  

Reunited with his phone, which Anthony had not realised was not with him before, and Mr 'Bon  

Six dogs hiding under a van from the sun
and from the pinched spirit of the locals
in Asni. Another dog joining them.  

Appetit' had proved relieved that the damage to the taxi was practically non-existent-though he still remained uncertain about how close or far he had been from seeing his honour damaged, we escaped the hotel. 

We soon escaped the town of Asni which Anthony had quietly disliked anyway. He recognised tiredness and a meanness of spirit when he saw it, or rather when it pursued him.

We got to the airport in very good time to complete the arrangement for handing over the car-11 am. The car park was huge, something we had not anticipated and several attempts at ringing the car hire people and getting them live on the phone ended with us being left with the option of only leaving a voice message. Anthony wondered if he had the right number, and to be doubly sure rang the number on their card which I had been keeping from the first time we found them, a different number from the one he had. Nada, Nothing. At 11.30 we left the car unlocked with with keys etc in the glove compartment. We got in the airport and joined the right queues to check in, to exchange our dirhams for euros, I got 85 euros in the exchange, if it should have been a hundred euros the main point was to get to France in one piece. 

We girded our loins up for security-two or three sets of it. The queues were huge, half to two thirds of a mile long in great zigzags packed close together. But somehow we found the humanity in the queue. The women in the queue were better at seeing the panic on men's faces than other men were. As the time ticked by and our flight time got closer and the queues moved but so slowly, that they seemed to not to move, we were let through the worst queue to the front of passport control not twice, but three times, by mature women from mostly Latinate countries who recognised the look of plight in our body language and faces.

Even after that great leap forward through the big queue, fifteen minutes from our flight supposedly leaving there was another layer of policemen checking passports and boarding pass slips which was thankfully much shorter. Then as passengers we were made to queue outside in the open air in single file by Ryanair. On the plane relief mingled with regret as we sat down in our seats and divided our attention spans into the books each of us had to hand to distract ourselves with.

Getting off the plane, Anthony made me go first with my luggage, perhaps wanting a bit of space from me given how little space their might be after, and I watched as he struggled with his case going down the steps, and a young man with some foresight took the case from him and gave it back to him when Anthony had reached the bottom step. It was at that point I realised how fast and reactive travel plans have to be with modern travel; if Anthony had thought beforehand and left his luggage in the hold, the better to be able to walk down the steps....  but that discussion about what to do never happened, part of the promise of cheap flights is that you can have what you want and it does not cost the earth. We are encouraged to think we are omniscient and can manage all the costs well enough. 

Getting out of Toulouse Blagnac Airport was okay. Anthony still had to stop for a pee in the airport toilets, having been denied a pee on the plane because he wanted it towards the end of the flight. I found my block of ten metro tickets. We got the bus, joined the tram for two stops and then found the car where Anthony had left it locked. I don't know how much I portrayed that I was tired, after all anyone changing the country they are in and getting home in one day flat is bound to feel tired, but I strove to be attentive, Anthony bought pancakes and some special treats at a butchers in urban Toulouse that was near closing, and the return journey was without incident. The sunsets were blander than they had been the last time Anthony had driven us from the airport. Getting off the motorway and returning to narrower, more familiar, roads was a relief. Each small road closer to home was more relief.

Our meal of pancakes plus different savoury leftovers from the fridge was surprisingly uplifting. The white wine helped. And so to bed, but not without me giving him a back scratch to ease his sleep before going to my own bed, where I lay wishing for my bed in Ireland. I would get there soon enough.