Travels With Brian

Is he Dead?

I started my first day with Canadian company Wattpad wearing an "I Love Canada" T-shirt. Not a particularly auspicious start perhaps, but at the time my other T-shirts were somewhere in Amsterdam, along with my toiletries, sanity, some presents for my new colleagues, and several hours of airport boredom and chaos. My first trip to Canada had been interesting, but a good lesson in karma if nothing else.

Thankfully within five minutes of walking through the door the manager had taken pity on me and had provided me with a company t-shirt and a much needed cup of coffee. And so I found myself seventeen floors up in North York, Toronto, looking out on a fascinating grid of bustling streets which I'd explored a little bit the day before.

And snow. 

It was early November, minus eight degrees Celsius, and Brian* was suffering a bit from jet lag and an abrupt change in climate from the somewhat soggier England.

* - Before I get too far into things, I think that at this point I perhaps need to explain Brian. Brian came into existence during a conversation with a friend online, a dyslexic spelling error made in reference to my somewhat neurodiverse way of doing things and thinking around corners, so Brian is a not too complex anagram of Brain. Sometimes he is my friend, sometimes a somewhat complex dancing partner with unusual dietary requirements, broad taste in music and a penchant for fantasy and science fiction. He will make many appearances in this, and will be present all through the editing process which is a painful experience at best. He also likes footnotes, which is something he picked up from Terry Pratchett**. Back in your box Brian, there's a good lad.

** - Sir Terry Pratchett is a comic fantasy author who happens to be a favourite of mine. He sadly passed away a few years ago, but his writing kept me company for about thirty years and still inspires me, and is also responsible for my Wattpad username, TheOrangutan.

Right, rewind forty-eight hours, give or take the 5 hour time difference, and the whole travel debacle had started in Devon, England, the pointy bit at the south-western tip of the UK (see map above). 

It was November 2012 and I'd managed to land a part-time job with Wattpad, and so had been invited out to the Wattpad offices in Toronto, Canada. I'd never been to Canada before, so I was somewhat excited. I'd even had to get a new passport as my old one had lapsed, and it was only the second time I'd ever been on a long haul flight (the previous time had been the US in 1995 with a friend - but that's another story for another day and indeed another chapter in this written piece of oddity). The company had arranged my flights, so all I had to do was get to the airport. I had of course completely forgotten about the journey on the other side of the pond (thank you Brian), but we'll get to that about six hours from now.

A nice man in a nondescript taxi took me the five miles to the local airport (handy) and I joined the other fifty or so people who were taking what looked like a bus with wings on the trip to Amsterdam. Yes, I was flying east before I got to go west, this is what happens when you live in the rural southwest of England.

Fog. A useful start. If nothing else it stopped me seeing all the abandoned hulks of previously broken down aircraft that seemed to litter the edges of Exeter airport, but it meant that we were twenty minutes or so late leaving. Not too bad, twenty minutes is ok.

An hour or so later we landed slightly sideways on the tarmac of one of the many runways at Amsterdam and carrying my shoulder bag (or man bag as my kids call it), I muddled my way through the airport to my gate for the flight to Toronto.

"Passport please sir. Ah***..."

***- Now "Ah..." when you're traveling is a little like taking your car to the garage and hearing that sharp intake of breath from the mechanic. Or hearing "Hmm..." from the dentist when he's got you in a horribly vulnerable position on a reclining chair. It means "damn, I've got to explain something potentially expensive, painful, or delaying to a middle-aged bald guy who's looking a little tense."