The unexpected morning that started Subtextt

One cancelled flight. One stranger. One realisation.

After six months of living on opposite sides of the world, I was finally on my way to join my husband in Sydney. Saying goodbye to London was heartbreaking, but I’d had twelve hours on a flight to pull myself together. By the time I landed in Singapore I was feeling more like myself.

The hard part is over. Just one more flight.

Changi airport didn’t disappoint. I went to all the spots friends had told me about - the magnificent Jewel, the calming butterfly garden, the cacti haven. I was excited now, between something that had ended and something that was about to begin.

When the gate was announced I made my way to security. No food or water allowed.

But I still have a banana in my hand. Don’t throw it in the bin, someone will want it.

So I offered it to the first person walking past. She smiled and said no thank you, so I handed it to the security guard and went through.

At the gate, everything was going smoothly. People were waiting to board when the announcement came.

BA009 has been cancelled due to unforeseen staffing shortages.

OMG what!

I’d never had a cancelled flight before. So I did what anyone would do, I phoned a friend. My husband reminded me how fortunate I was to have a night in one of the safest countries in the world.

Maybe I was lucky?

So I booked myself onto the next British Airways flight the following evening and headed to a hotel to rest.

The next morning, someone approached my table at breakfast and asked if she could join me. It took me a second to recognise her.

It was the woman I had offered the banana to.

It’s you!

We spent the entire morning together, walking around Singapore, getting to know each other. She told me about her life as a writer, originally from Sydney but now based in Europe, where she ran writing retreats. She had been on her way to Sydney for a Prime Ministers Award when the flight was cancelled.

She had done the very thing I was trying to do - she had bet on herself.

I couldn’t believe it. Writing was something I had wanted to take seriously for years. I’d always enjoyed it, and I was good at it. But just like most people, I’d let that important detail about myself get buried under routine and bills.

My creativity had been reignited when I wrote a design fiction blog about space technologies for work, and I knew then that writing was where I needed to be. And yet I hadn’t committed to it.

But here I was, at the most transitional point in my life, sitting across from a successful woman who had done exactly that.

And that stayed with me.

When I arrived in Sydney, everything slowed down. After the pace of London, there was a lot of quiet which I wasn’t used to. It was like coming down from decades of stress and expectation, something that allowed me to finally hear my own thoughts about my own life.

The first six months were beyond tough. No job, no income, friends and family were far away.

But I kept thinking about that morning in Singapore. The banana, the cancelled flight, the delay that gave me a morning with a stranger. Those things happening together, in that sequence, felt like something worth paying attention to.

Maybe it wasn’t random.

I was at the start of something new, more open than I had ever been. Ready to get out there and make a difference in whatever way I could.

That was the subtext of the whole experience.

The banana started a conversation. The cancelled flight bought me a morning I wasn’t supposed to have. And what happened in that time gave me the push I’d needed to stop hesitating.

It taught me to look more closely at what’s really going on beneath the surface of things.

That’s what this blog is. And how it started.

Thank you for being here, it means more than you know.

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