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In another column for KentOnline, Broadstairs writer and dominatrix Melissa Todd reveals how she has flown to Massachusetts and had to pay a nurse to watch her via Zoom take a Covid test before she got on the plane...
I’m in the US! Massachusetts, near the Dr Seuss museum – yeah, apparently that’s a thing, who knew?
I’ve never travelled so far solo before. It’s been quite the adventure. Travelling was always a faff, but Covid means there’s so much more to go wrong.
For the US, I had to get a test done and the results back within 24 hours of departure, but also pay a nurse to watch me perform said test via Zoom.
Poor woman. She was very charming and pleasant for a woman whose job it is to watch strangers shove sticks up their honkers.
I was cack-handed and trembly, because just about everyone I know had seemed suddenly to succumb to the beastly ‘vid, and a girl I’d worked with the day before announced proudly mid-shoot that she was awfully snuffly, and unvaccinated with it.
Somehow I’d escaped lurgy all the same. The god of germinology smiled down upon me.
You have only 10 minutes to take a picture of yourself alongside the test and your passport, upload it and await your certificate. I prayed my reliably unreliable internet would behave itself for once. It did.
“Nothing can possibly go wrong now!” I crowed, although on setting off to Heathrow I found the first three garages I passed had sold out of petrol.
Oh good, more jeopardy! Minster Co-op saved me. I wanted to snog the charming attendant, and had the certificate that proved me safe to snog. No time, sadly. Onwards!
People were very charming and helpful to me at the airport. I think I’ve reached the age where I look to be constantly in need of assistance, which suits me.
I’d forgotten I had a tablet in my bag, so I got pulled at security. Even when they showed it to me on the screen, I flat denied it was mine. It had been a long day. “Oh dear! Silly me! I’m so sorry!” I said, twice, while the nice security guard smiled indulgently and helped me repack. Doubtless he’s terribly attached to his poor old mother.
I had to change at Atlanta, which I realise makes no geographical sense, at the longest airport in the world. I walked and walked.
I walked so far I started to suspect the entire evening was a hallucination, or that I’d misunderstood my booking and was actually being forced to walk to New England. Minutes before the gate closed I threw myself on to a plane.
Massachusetts is stunning. It’s a place of contrasts, skunks and blue jays, fabulous flaunted wealth pressed up against gruesome poverty.
Despite banks of snow, I sunbathed until my skin prickled in protest. Every house looks like it belongs in a horror film, sheltering a dysfunctional family, whispering about the satanic misfit daughter who lurks in the basement dissecting crows.
The first day I went out walking for miles and got spectacularly lost. I found myself under a motorway bridge in a city of homeless people, some of whom were wandering into thundering traffic, holding up signs, begging for money, food, jobs.
Boarded-up shops displayed tattered signs suggesting places to get free meals, alternatives to opiates. They called out to me - “How ya doin’, sister?” and I called out a Bertie Wooster-ish “Hulloo!”, gave a little wave, and scurried away, feeling an idiot, and terrified, and ashamed for feeling terrified.
I wanted to take pictures, but why? Voyeurism or journalism? Whether the picture seemed valid seemed to depend on my motivation, and I wasn’t sure I fully understood it. I watched a man staggering and weaving barefoot through thundering traffic. I kept walking.
I miss real ale, Marmite, proper toilet paper, but chiefly the assumption that of course you won’t want a plastic bag. Everything is double-bagged in plastic here, then packed in more plastic at the checkout, as if they’ve a personal vendetta against turtles.
Mainly I miss my long-suffering friends and family back in Thanet. I hadn’t realised how addicted I was to messaging them all day until they were all asleep and I still had important stuff to tell them. But from tomorrow they won’t be able to escape my in-person burbling.
The best of travelling is coming home again.