Blue Blurs
A professional photographer's luggage is often smothered with yellow-and-black gaffer tape. It simply makes for quick recognition and says absolutely nothing about your tastes in luggage design.
But it’s jolly handy. Take the farrago in Reykjavik.
The photographer and I had just landed at Reykjavik and seen our luggage wheeled out to where several buses were standing. The person at the desk told us to join the queue beside the bus being loaded. We hoisted two each of the photographer’s cases of paraphernalia (he never let these out of his sight), went out and stood in the queue for the bus being loaded. It was bright blue.
The loading of luggage was almost completed. My photographer watched like an anxious mother as his stuff followed the rest. The job done, the horizontal door was slammed shut and a man by the passengers’ gangway holding his clipboard began ticking off each passenger as they boarded.
When it was our turn we started to follow but the chap frowned at us, shook his head sadly and walked away to attend to other matters. We wondered about this but waited patiently.
Then the engine started, the door slammed, the bus moved off and we stood gazing after it.
I shot back to the desk person. ‘Our bus,’ I said. ‘It’s gone with our luggage’.
She looked over my shoulder, smiled and shook her head.
‘No, sir! You have not missed it. It is due to leave in a few minutes.’ She pointed. ‘There it is.’ And there stood a red bus, now revealed by the departure of the blue one and being loaded.
‘But - the blue one?’
‘The blue one? Oh, that is an American group on a ten-day tour round Iceland.’
Relative to Australia, Iceland is small. But when you see three weeks’ baggage vanishing into its distances it becomes vast.
At this point memory fails me. Some sort of investigation occurred, I think. The next I remember is that we were in a taxi, telling the driver to follow the route of the blue bus and keep his eyes skinned for any sight of it, anywhere. He seemed delighted to obey and we shot off.
Blue is a popular colour in Iceland. Many houses have doors and woodwork picked out in blue. Its small fishing vessels pulled up along its beaches are often bright blue. I was sweating hard and sitting on the edge of my seat, gripping the back of the seat in front. Blue blurs were flashing past our windows.
We had been bounding along for some ten minutes when the image of school buildings and a splash of blue paintwork went streaking by.
‘Stop!’ I shrieked.
It was an irrational decision. For one patch of blue among the dozens already passed we could be making the search more difficult than before. He stood on the brake, stopped and reversed for a few yards and there, being unloaded in the yard, was the rear end of a blue bus. Luggage was being taken into the building. We ran through the gates and into the building and started burrowing in the pile of exceedingly heavy and colourful baggage. I had no idea that baggage could be quite so heavy and colourful.
Then ours, with its startling bands of broad yellow-and-black gaffer tape plastered all over it, shone out from all the rest. We gave hoots of delight and began dragging it all out.
We became aware of an elderly American couple, standing quite still and looking at us. We gave them a smile. They smiled back and told us to have a nice day.
Which, by then, is exactly what it was.
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Text and illustration ©Paul Wigmore 2010