Jet Lag

One of the hazards of all this international travel is of course that where ever you go you spend the first couple of days feeling completely lousy.  I’m not a particularly good traveler; I have to dose myself up with Bach's Rescue Remedy and practice childbirth breathing techniques just to get on the plane in the first place.    

Flying is a means to an end, and if I don’t fly I don’t get to see my friends and family so I always console myself with the fact that statistically I am far more likely to be involved an accident on the way on the airport than any incident up in the air.  I always have a drop of wine at the first available opportunity and have conditioned myself to view those 10 hours stuck on the plane as quality time to catch up on some Oscar winning movies.  What else can you do? My husband who is a seasoned traveler simply buckles up his seatbelt and falls asleep – and yes, he has even slept through take-off (?!!).

The real killer though is jet lag.   Apparently it takes one day for every hour of time difference to get over the effects of jet lag and despite trying different remedies I have yet to find a cure.  I read somewhere that you should get yourself into your new time zone 24 hours prior to departure – especially when it comes to eating meals.  So if I had skipped breakfast and started the day with my dinner by the time I reach the UK the next morning I should be feeling as fit as a fiddle. I haven’t try this one yet but I did once try some homeopathic anti jet lag tablets that left me feeling so spaced out I couldn’t have cared less what time zone I was in.  Perhaps that’s the answer.

Anyway, so how can this arduous task of travelling back and forwards across the Atlantic be made more enjoyable? Well, travelling with Air New Zealand certainly helped.  This was the first time I’d flown with Air New Zealand and I was well impressed.  Our flights were smooth and on time; the planes were brand new and despite a small design fault with the snazzy looking pull-out drinks holder – basically it didn’t hold the drinks – everything on board the plane seemed to work brilliantly. 

 

The crew were relaxed and happy, the food surprisingly edible, and the in-flight entertainment was excellent.  The safety-video was the funniest I’ve ever seen – those antipodeans have a wonderfully wacky sense of humour!

And you’d need a pretty good sense of humour to want to spend 26 hours sat on a plane going to New Zealand.  It’s an awful long way and I have every admiration for those brave folks who had to get off the plane when it re-fueled at LAX and face the joys of the American immigration department, before continuing on their journey to Auckland an hour later.

However, the real highlight of the return trip for me was discovering the British sit-com “Episodes” on the TV channel.  I sat and watched the entire series in one go, spellbound. “Episodes” is a comedy about a screenwriting couple who re-locate to LA to write a US version of their award winning TV show which, by the time the US network has made them change the entire plot and most of the characters to appeal to an American audience, is totally unrecognizable. Matrimonial disharmony ensues.  Even my teenage daughter was enthralled – she kept nudging me, “that’s us mum – that’s you!”.  Tamsin Greig is believably funny as a comparative sane woman buckling under the strain of America and trust me, I know exactly how that feels! Anyone out there thinking of re-locating to LA – watch this show – it’s a pretty good representation of what you are up against. 

5,800 miles after leaving Heathrow we were back on the ground and ready for the final leg of our journey back home to Pasadena, and I can assure you that I felt an awful lot safer up in the air with those happy-go-lucky New Zealanders than in the hands of a manic LA cab driver determined to break the land speed record and jump every red light.  Those statistics don’t lie.

So now it’s just the jet lag to contend with.  This feeling of being out of sync and disorientated; waking up full of beans at four in the morning and falling asleep on the sofa at seven at night. And I know I must be jet lagged because rather worryingly I realize I’ve just referred to Pasadena as “home”.  Is that a Freudian slip?  If Pasadena is home what does that make the UK? Just a holiday top spot? Does that mean my bubble has finally burst?