Free Queen Unseen by Peter Hince

groaned.
    Seeing my urgent need, she brought the milk straight over.
    I sipped it gingerly as the others continued to give me sanctimonious glances. I could feel the milk sliding down and a biological reaction of indeterminate result building. Then, without warning, someone’s breakfast thudded down next to me: bacon and eggs, sausage, fried potatoes, pancakes, waffles, syrup, toast and jam – all on the same plate.
    The sight and smells hit a sensitive nerve and I vacated thetable immediately. Picking up my check for the milk, I managed to reach the cashier’s desk but was sick over both the check and the cash register. As I handed over the soggy bill and some soggier cash, I feebly suggested to the astonished cashier that she kept the change. I hobbled back to bed, where I swore I would never drink again.
    I did.
LOOSE CHANGE
    During my first trip in America I was initiated into the habit of tipping. I had occasionally given tips in England but just to round off a bill or a bit of loose change, besides I rarely had the money to pay the bill – let alone tip. Now I was being asked for 15 per cent – and more!
    Sky Caps, the official airport porters, always expected a tip. If you didn’t give a dollar per piece of luggage for the leg-sapping 20 yards or so to the airline check-in, strange things might happen to your luggage as a result. I once lost all my luggage on returning from a break in Bermuda during the lengthy 1980 Game tour. I was feeling very relaxed as I had discovered the joys of scuba diving and deemed the experience ‘better than drugs’. I checked in my two bags and expected to be reunited with them at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
    After changes of aircraft and long delays, the plane finally touched down in Chicago several hours late. Jim Barnett, Queen’s lighting designer with whom I had travelled, collected his luggage and together we waited for mine – and waited and waited until that sickening moment when the carousel stops and the sole unclaimed case is taken off and put to one side. An eerie silence falls, and the realisation hitsthe pit of your stomach – your bags are lost. It was now late in the evening and this had already been a very long day, with the two-hour drive to Milwaukee yet to come. After filling in a form at the airline’s office, I was presented with a complimentary airline emergency kit comprising of a mini toothbrush and paste, a plastic razor, a minute tube of something that promised to metamorphose into enough cream for a couple of shaves, a comb (less than useful in my case, as I groomed my hair with my pillow) and a single tissue. The tissue was presumably provided because by now I might be crying.
    The ‘misdirected’ baggage office – ‘not lost sir, just temporarily misdirected’ – assured me that my bags would be delivered to my hotel in Milwaukee the next morning. After picking up the rental car from a vast grid of cloned, bland automobiles, we drove north towards Wisconsin. On the Interstate, the car developed problems, causing us to lose speed (with a maximum speed limit of 55 mph, we had little left to lose) and, as we pulled into a gas station as a precaution, the car died.
    Jimmy Barnett was furious, but I was by now so numb from the rigours of the day, I just chuckled in disbelief and lit another cigarette. As we waited for a replacement car to be delivered, Jimmy got more enraged, and in true Basil Fawlty style got out and proceeded to kick the car all over – punishing it for failing us.
    He then got back into the driver’s seat and punished it from the inside, just to make sure it had learned its lesson.
    Next day, after a couple of hours’ sleep, I kept calling from the gig to the hotel to check if my bags had been delivered.They had not. My bags then proceeded to follow me around for a week playing catch-up. As I left each town, they would arrive, so I survived on tour T-shirts, hotel gift-shop items, personal hygiene tolerance and acts of