I'm taking my poems to Australia and I feel like a Tyke timelord - Ian McMillan
So much air below me. So much sky above me.
The constant hum of the engines; the constant hum of time passing slowly, slowly. I’m on a huge plane passing through timezones and states of mind, passing over mountains and rivers and town and villages and people looking up at the lights of the plane with me in it. Maybe they’re waving. I hope they are.
This journey began last year; well, metaphorically it began last year although it does feel (the air below, the sky above, the constant hum) that I’ve been in the air for months and that the actual flight might have begun a long time ago.
The journey began in a room in Leeds where I’d just been presenting my radio show The Verb as part of the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival, a celebration of poetry in all its many forms.
The festival had just come to an end and I asked my producer if there would be a Contains Strong Language next year and if so where would it be.
She was rushing out of the door but as she did so she said ‘Well, in 2025 we’re going to be going to Bradford for the City of Culture but then…’
The door was closing behind her as she left and so I only caught the tail end of the words she was saying but I’m sure she said ‘next year we’re going to Australia.’
Did she really say that? Surely not. It must have been some kind of strange echo.
Maybe it was a stray line from a poem that had been recorded in one of the sessions at the festival and then accidentally played out from a speaker.
I went home and told my wife that I thought I was going to Australia in the fairly near future and even as I said the words they felt like a piece of fantasy fiction.
‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it’ she said. ‘That Sydney Harbour Bridge?’ I said, wanting a cheap laugh that didn’t materialise.
And now (air below/sky above) here I am, 40,000 feet over the spinning globe heading for Sydney.
Most of the time my life feels real; sometimes it feels all too real. The cancelled train: that feels real. The spilled cup of tea all over my trousers just before the important meeting: that feels real.
This feels like something from a film, one of those slow European films where nothing much happens for ages but when things do happen they are imbued with a kind of earned significance.
I looked at the timetable for the trip before I went; I was only going for a week which seems a bit daft for such a long way but I had things to do.
I was disconcerted to note that although I set off on Monday and the flight, with a short stop in Singapore, was about 22 hours but I didn’t arrive until Wednesday. Somehow, down the back of the aircraft seat I would have lost a day.
So somewhere over Central Asia on a plane the size of Billingley The Bard of Barnsley is staring at the interactive map on the back of the seat in front. He’s been in the air for hours and there are hours to go.
He’s a Tyke Time Lord, moving through time and space from Monday to Wednesday without touching Tuesday. The terrible jetlag is still to come; the life-enhancing poetry from all over Australia is still to come.
Let’s leave him, staring at the map. The sky above. The air below.