I was so tired I managed to put ketchup in my coffee!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

I’m on the FB2 Flybus from Oslo to the airport and having trouble keeping my eyes open. Come on man, don’t miss the little you’ll see of Norway outside of the city.

Beyond the bus window the grey light of a winter dawn reflects off the dusting of snow on the barren rolling fields.

The weekend visiting my good friend Blitz and his far better other was gentle and most pleasant, as had been the two days I’d spent in London with my mum on the way to Oslo.

However, I’d felt exhausted for weeks before I left and as the trip approached, it became a kind of self-fulfilling worry prophecy.

Oh no I am so tired. Will I be able to do it? Should I go at all? Will I cancel one bit of it? Which bit will I cancel? How can I explain that?

Instead I went online and booked a triangle of tickets from Dublin to Heathrow to Oslo to Dublin, so then I stayed online and paid my M50 toll and booked and paid for parking at Dublin Airport, and then for a tiny moment I felt a teeny bit smug, until I hit two more tolls on the motorway.

Oops, there goes the chin, dipping again. Stay with it Adley. Don’t be dribbling in front of the locals now. You’re in public. Look at Norway out of the window and then you can sleep on the plane. Yes, I know it’s only two hours, but my god that’d help. Any sleep I can grab will prove vital, because I can’t be dropping off like this in four hours, when I’m sitting at the wheel of my car, doing 120kph on the motorway home.

At the airport I manage to get myself into a sweaty lather, by walking at speed up and down the Departures Shopping area, increasingly desperately looking for a newspaper. Despite it being obvious the first time I look that they have no international newspapers, my minuscule brain cannot accept that a modern European airport might not have newspapers.

Slumping into a chair I glance around to see everyone staring at their phones; thumbs stroking the screens of their tablets; fingertips flying over the keyboards of laptops.

I’m a dinosaur. I want a newspaper. More than that though, I can’t wait to get back to freezing cold Ireland and stop sweating.

The fights with SAS were exceptionally cheap and when I see the plane I understand why. Crammed to the rafters, we are wedged into tiny aged seats, clothed in fabric that reminds me of 1973.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.