9.30am. Tuesday morning on the 15th November I arrived at Newcastle Airport to begin the first of eight trips to Dublin to work as a sketch artist at the
"Irish Museum of Modern Art" "Rivane Neuenschwander’s exhibition"
As the Museum was paying for the flight and Hotel, all I had to do was check in on-line, sounds easy right? The courier were Ryanair, and as I had already been given my flight check in reference number via email, all I had to do was go onto Ryanair's site and complete my check-in on-line, this is when the first hiccup appeared, the check-in site didn't recognise my reference number!
OH My God! panic stations! I was due to fly out the very next day! and the Ryanair site had no record of my booking, a quick phone call to Ryanair themselves, quickly rectified this, the reference was correct, but I had simply used my email address instead of the booking agent's own email address DOH! (this was to be one of the many occasions that the lack of the fantastic female ability to multi-tasking had let me down). Being a man, I had read the first line of the email containing my flight reference and if I had only continued reading that email, the sender stated quite clearly that I had to enter in the booking agents email along with the flight reference.
Once I checked in successfully, I was given the option of adding a
Priority Booking option for only an additional £10, with the promise of speedy journey and most important the chance to board the plane BEFORE the general rabble of mere ordinary passengers. I hovered over the
"Click to apply now" button, but common sense got the better of me, they were paying for the flight, so why should I pay extra? This wasn't supposed to cost me anything right?
Well after arriving at Newcastle Airport, I handed in my recently printed boarding pass to the young girl at the Ryanair check-in desk and placed the only bit of luggage I possessed on the scales, and waited with baited breathe as it was weighed. The limit for hand luggage was 10KG, she smiled and said, "That's OK!", and I inquired if she could tell how much did it actually weigh? "9.5KG, just under your permitted weight, you can now go through the gates and wait for the flight to be called". As I walked away from the check-in, I slowly and carefully emptied my jacket pockets of mobile phone, mobile phone adapter, Samsung Galaxy Tab (like an IPad - but half the size and quarter the price), the adapter for my Galaxy, my compact camera and leads and returned them back to their place, nice and safe in the hand luggage, I had just had weighed! It sure felt a lot heavier now.
Now my next hurdle was getting through security barrier where everyone gets scanned, I had planned ahead, and put all my metallic objects into my hand luggage, placed my hat, jacket on a tray next to my now practically bursting at the seams hand luggage, and then cautiously tip toed through the scanner and heard... nothing! Success! this was going well, until I realised I had left my shoes on the other side of the barrier! So sheepishly I got the security guard to stop the flow of passengers through the scanner so I could pick up my shoes and place the onto the conveyor belt to be scanned for perhaps hidden contraband or tightly packed explosives, but nobody said anything as I walked through the scanner for the second time to collect my freshly scanned shoes on the far side (funny how walking back through that scanner thingy draws everyones attention LOL!, pity the scanner doesn't knock out that man pong from well worn trainers!
Going through the gate to the duty free area of the airport, my senses were quickly attacked from all sides by fabulous wealth and opulence on display for the urban traveller to browse and buy before embarking onto their flight. As a non drinker and non smoker I quickly walked past all the pretty bottles of coloured water and vast quantities of packs of rolled up dried tobacco plants, and I quickly found myself in front of the one shop you always find in these airports, the one especially designed to catch most men of a certain age eyes, the electronics consumer store, full to the brim with all the latest must have gadgets, and even the option to buy cases for all these must be seen with gadgets! Not forgetting those ridiculously over-priced earphones, to use with all these gadgets. My eyes were practically starting to water at the sights of all this expensive plastic that would be worthless if dropped. My head happily intervened, I already had a bag, full suitable must haves, and really didn't require any more, for one thing, I'd have to pay extra to bring whatever I bought back, and I had just so many jacket pockets free!
I eventually found myself in the area of the airport everyone ends up in at least once during all their waiting around to board times, the food court! now all my visual senses were useless here!, except that is for my nose, my wife always said a way to my heart was through my nose and her cooking! I decided, as I hadn't had a breakfast at home, now was a good time to fill my belly before this epic journey begins in earnest. I decided on a Traditional English breakfast, egg, sausage, bacon, mushrooms, a fried tomato, baked beans and that ever so famous English side dish, hash browns? I followed this down with a nice small bottle of real orange juice, the one with the real bits of orange left inside to enhance the natural taste of the artificially created orange juice tasting liquid!
Feeling warm and with a full belly, I eventually found myself heading for the gate when my flight number came up. When I got there, I found loads of other passengers milling around waiting for news of the flight and the gate opening, I took a seat and waited. It was while waiting I saw that Ryanair had made two aisles from ropes leading up to the gate doors, one marked
Priority booking passengers only, and the other (a much wider and larger aisle) labelled
Other Passengers, why so large I wondered? Were Priority passenger thinner? yes that must be it, I thought.
When the tannoy announced that the gate was now open, could all the Priority passengers please make their way to the gate for boarding now, three people got up together with their large amounts of drinks and ciggy's and went to to meet the girl at the gate who checked their passports, lucky blighters! I thought, getting onto the transit coach first. After these three were safely on board out of harms way of the rest of us, the tannoy announced that the "Other" passengers could now make their way to the gate, which they all did, as I was listening to some Adele on my own must have MP3 player, I soon realised that I was the only one left in the lobby as I saw the last few walking through the gate! I quickly gathered my meagre belongings and found myself the last one to go through the gate and onto the transit bus to take us to our plane, it was funny seeing those three priority booking passengers with their faces pressed up against the bus windows near the front, as I stepped into the rear door of the bus. The journey to the plane was quick and when we pulled up next to the plane, the driver opened the front doors first to allow only the Priority passengers off first, followed in hot pursuit by the hordes of Other passengers, it was crazy watching them all funnelled into the flight of stairs at the front of the plane, it was during this stampeded, I noticed a second and as yet, empty flight of stairs leading up to a doorway at the rear of the plane, it seemed silly to ignore it, so I waddled over and started up the stairs, feeling a bit like some celebrity or famous diplomat of sorts, all by myself on this empty flight of stairs, then others in the horde saw what I had done and a few at first broke away from the main herd, then more and more, but I managed to reach the top of the stairs and calmly walked into the empty rear section of the plane before this horde reached my flight of stairs. Welcome aboard said the pretty flight attended and ushered me in, I could pick any of the empty seat, that stretched what seemed forever in front of me. In the distance near the front I saw the reason for the stagnant march up the first flight of stairs, the priority passengers were busy standing in the middle of the aisle trying to get their hand luggage and large amounts of coloured water and packets of dried tobacco into the tiny overhead compartments. I happily strolled along one half of the plane past all the empty seats and eventually took one next to a window. So much for Priority booking I thought! Trying to fasten that ridiculously small belt around me made me wish, I'd never had that breakfast in the airport lounge earlier!
The flight, if you could call it that, was over before it began, it seemed, Newcastle to Dublin consists of basically two stages, take off to gain height, then descending to land, there was not much flying time to speak of. I do love looking at the fluffy clouds whilst the attendants art practising their semaphore signals to one another down the aisles, wish I could hear what she was saying, but my seat was directly above the two large stewardesses hair dryers, well they sounded like hair dryers.
and soon after a bump or two and a even louder screeching of brakes, we had finally landed in the land of the Leprauchauns, Dublin!
I got a taxi from the airport to my Hotel, but before reaching it, the Museum phoned and asked if I could come over earlier than planned as the Irish Press and TV crew wanted to film me sketching! So straight to the museum I went, where I met the lady who had organised my trip here, Maeve Butler, who signed me into the gallery and took me up a several flight of stairs into the main gallery, puffing, panting and red faced and out of breathe I stumbled into the main gallery to be met by 20 or so people who were waiting to meet me, Maeve introduced me as the sketch artist, and to my horror asked the waiting audience if they had any questions for me! Talk about a fish out of water, but eventually I get my breathe back and was able to answer all their questions with a few returned smiles and applause.
Maeve then showed me to the desk where I would be sitting and introduced the first person to describe to me their First Love, a member of staff called Stephen Taylor.
The film crew and director appeared out of the crowd and starting directing me on what he wanted for the TV footage, I hadn't even had time to take my hat off! If this was only the first few hours of the first day of my first trip, how on earth was I ever going to survive this ordeal!
Especially with seven more trips planned into my schedule over the next several weeks. The twenty or so years working as a Police artist took over, and soon I was back into my stride, asking Stephen about what he could recall and me sketching it all down just like I had done thousands of times before, this time in front of Irish RTE News cameras.
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| Stephen Taylor's "First Love" |
After the film crew left, I stayed on a sketched a couple of more "First Loves" with some pre-selected guests chosen for this opening evening.
Thirty or so minutes later, I found myself in one of the great halls were we were giving wine and sparkling water to drink and were I met Rivane Neuenschwander, the Brazilian artist I was here to help in her latest exhibition, she is one of the most interesting people I had met so far, and thanked her for inviting me over to Dublin. When the glasses were empty, we were ushered into another beautiful hall, this time with perfectly laid out dinner settings, and personalised name cards for each guest, I have finally made the big time, I thought, as I searched around the tables looking for my name card, I soon started thinking, as I couldn't see my name anywhere, then perhaps I shouldn't actually be here (wouldn't of been the first time I've put my foot in it!) but someone directed me to a table where my name was indeed beautifully hand written on a mustard coloured card, next to a Poet and one of the Museums residential spatial artists, Victorrio (sorry,didn't get his last name) and opposite was Janice, one of the gallery staff and next to her the Brazilian Deputy Counsellor from the Brazilian Embassy in Dublin! The meal was delicious, sorry I can't tell you what it was, but I had what looked to be the smallest chicken in the world in a very delightful sauce. I never thought I'd go the distance, as I definitely do not mix in these kind of circles, but mix I did, and eventually, tired, fed, and a little worse for wear (that was definitely sparkling water I drink wasn't it?) I found my way to Kelly's Hotel in the centre of Dublin, fell onto the bed and finding a remote switched on the wall mounted TV to see MY UGLY face staring back at me, it was the RTE News with the article all about my day at the Museum! They must be starved for decent news I thought as I drifted off into a deep sleep, dreaming of Priority Passengers and faces of First Loves.....
Well, I seem to have been making news headlines in Dublin! Here is the news report of my first working visit to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. You'll have to scroll for about 20 min into the video.
On the night of the opening, Irelands National Broadcaster included a short piece on First Love. You can watch the piece that appeared on the RTE Television News on 15 November at six and nine o'clock here..
You can also listen to the review of the show by Declan Long on the arts programme Arena, RTE Radio One, at
Aidan Dunne, a critic here in Ireland has also written a piece which can be found here..
