The airport has mauled me. No gels or liquids over 100ml – what the fuck is that all about? I hand the Asian-looking lady my shaving gel, sun lotion, deodorant, hair gel, contact lens solution and the small range of toiletries I stole from the hotel last night.
‘I guess I’ll have to stink for the rest of the journey.’ I joke. She winces with polite amusement and throws my possessions in the bin.
The people at the airport are out to get me. The man at the first desk asks me for secondary ID. I produce my MOD card, my student card and my Care Worker ID. He looks at me, pondering my triple façade, and asks me a complimentary three questions. “What is your business in the
By the metal detectors my camouflage backpack (a relic of my army days) is seized by a woman in glasses made for glaring. She sees my bottle of Sprite and asks where I bought it. I answer… nervously… and then sigh as the bottle thuds into the waste bin.
Finally I am through the gate, and my poor little backpack is seized again. A bald overweight man scruffles through it, like Pooh after honey, and then inspects my shoes. Finally he opens my leather folder and sniffs at my handouts from
‘I’m a writer.’ I mutter, as if confessing to my old headmaster.
Good news: I have a row of seats of myself; and no screaming kids. Hurrah! As usual I stare through the window as we take off, and imagine Shakespeare is sitting in the window seat. I always do that on planes – I don’t know why. Shakespeare looks tiredly at the passing fields of
I love airline food; maybe because it’s all nicely packaged. You can eat and then close all the rubbish up in the main course dish, clipping on the plastic lid so that the stewardess silently thanks you as she picks up your tidy tray. There is something very satisfying about pleasing waitresses. I imagine them all stood behind the curtains, gossiping about the handsome young man in Seat 14B who ate all his dinner.
Shakespeare looks across at me and rolls his eyes, before adjusting his headphones and returning to the episode of Fraiser he is watching.
Or maybe I like airline food because everyone eats the same thing. The needs of the beast sated by a rational administration; our little plane stabilising its passengers and fully equipped to get them in one piece across a vast distance. I am reminded of my army days. Sometimes efficiency is better than sex.
After watching Rise of the Silver Surfer and contemplating whether Johnny “The Human Torch” really achieved a sense of moral closure, I stretch out across the three seats. It is a “Hah! Sucker!” moment. And no, I’m not lying on Shakespeare; he’s gone to the toilet to marvel at the industrial array of buttons and instruction plaques and to wonder at the smell of cinnamon that you get when you flush.
The turbulence used to scare me, but as I lie here with the plane rumbling around me I feel strangely free. Like cruising in an open-topped womb, if you know what I mean.
Carry me away from all this. Give me an adventure. Please. I pray that the woman behind me is an international assassin; or that an easily-defeatable terrorist is about to leap into the aisle. Maybe someone has garrotted Shakespeare in the toilet.
Oh God, I was not made for this world. And I don’t need to sit in a plane to feel unnatural.
I am not a nervous flyer. I am an imaginative flyer. As the plane comes into land I look through the window and gauge the height at which we could survive if the engines died. I know that in reality a plane could explode after a drop of a few feet, but nevertheless there is a certain height at which I feel more confident – confident of being able to perform some action that would increase my chance of survival.
Still gonna die; still gonna die; still gonna die; fighting chance; get ready to vault the fat guy; clunk! We’ve landed. Someone applauds as the plane touches down on the runway. I consider joining in with this lunatic, just to be ironic. But I am distracted by the water that starts dripping from the ceiling above me. Is that supposed to happen? It could be a serious technical fault; but being English I say nothing and condemn the next flight to possible disintegration.
At Immigration, a man clearly versed in the Aristotlean Form barks at me, ‘Left finger! Right finger!’ I mash the fingerprint scanner and hope that my foxtrot is up to scratch, should it be requested.
I have a connecting flight, so after a cursory glance at the depleted
I refrain from continuing the German theme as I move through security, carrying my shoes and my meagre possessions in a plastic tray. Instead, I am reminded of the scene in Fortress where they first arrive at the prison. I keep my eyes up, lest I should bump into the sweating naked body of Christopher Lambert. At the metal detector my poor little bag is grabbed again and another bottle of Sprite bites the dust. Not a good day for Lemonade.
Later, I sit by the departure gate, surrounded by an escalating debris of chicken and lettuce. I have bought a wrap, but the nearby Americans are looking at me. Clearly I am not eating it correctly. I go to the bathroom to clean up, and then make the fatal mistake of having a shit on a state-of-the-art laser-armed toilet that misinterprets my every move.
I return from the bathroom with a thrice-soaked arse and then buy a muffin. I know how to eat those.
Finally we are called through the gate. I am followed by an American woman who speaks on her phone like a parrot. ‘No. No, I did not say that. No I did not say that. I did not say that. Are you coming home? No, I did not say that. Are you coming home? Are you coming home?’ Perhaps she is related to the toilet. If I wave my arse at her she might flush prematurely.
At last I am on the second plane. I shuffle down the first class aisle, where men sit and talk to the backs of each other’s seats. They don’t even have phones anymore, just devices attached to their ears. I imagine Hell might be like this; rows of sinners on pews, reciting futile conversations to themselves.
No three seats this time. I wedge myself in next to an 80 year old who texts like Mozart, his thumb moving across the keypad faster than his heartbeat. I then watch people have arguments over their luggage in the cramped aisles. Smaller airlines are where people come to teeter on the brink of violence. I ignore the tension and hunt for another Sudoku puzzle in the in-flight magazine. I find one, half-finished. Maybe it was an international assassin. Well whoever she was she fucked up my Sudoku. I spend the next half hour destroying her serifs and replacing them with my chunky man-numerals.
We then get an announcement on the speakers saying that the captain hasn’t turned up yet. Everyone laughs and beside me Mozart says ‘What the hell?’ I respond with something English and witty, which no one around me understands. My mind is clearly tying to eat a chicken wrap instead of a muffin. A laser-toilet of retribution flashes in Mozart’s eyes and I fall silent, looking out of the window for a drunk pilot. Behind me, a child starts screaming.
An hour passes and the pilot still hasn’t arrived. I wonder if Mozart used to fly during the war – maybe I could tell him to crack on with it and get me to
Another half-hour passes. The Americans start calling their relatives to inform them of the situation, their voices ringing with quiet delight. They sound like they are talking to a documentary film crew, heroic in their consumer stoicism. And when the captain finally arrives there is applause, not from a sole lunatic this time but from a mass of the righteous affronted. Some make attempts to be sarcastic, but they just don’t do it right. I snuggle smugly into my “diabolical” level Sudoku, a prize muffin amongst crumbling chicken wraps.
We take off past a stunning sunset, vivid and massive. Typical bloody Americans! The roar of the engines makes the safety briefing inaudible, which in turn makes it harder for us to be seen ignoring it. And as we lift, the city below is a tidy set of orange and white squares. It’s like flying over a circuit board. The first officer announces that the plane is getting colder and that he will “throw some more logs onto the fire”. I hope there are no other autistic people on the flight; a panic would surely ensure.
The heat kicks in, and I fidget in my black coat. My continuing endeavour to look like Hamlet bites me in the ass again, and if Shakespeare were still with me I’m sure he’d be sniggering right now. I try not to sweat as the captain broadcasts the names of “Don”, “Jerry” and all his other staff. I wonder who came up with the idea of introducing the flight crew on plane journeys. The man responsible for such triviality must surely possess the secrets of the universe. A genius we cannot comprehend. I long to meet him… one day.
The stewardess comes by offering drinks. I ask for a Sprite in honour of my fallen comrades. She has none. My quest for lemonade continues…
Heading west across
Oh bugger, I fell asleep. Now I feel like crap. The captain is waffling something about landing, apologising and thanking us at the same time. He prostates himself to our mercy and promises good weather. Clearly First Officer Chamberlain has been schooling the captain during flight.
I look out of the window as we descend towards the
No applause – we did that when we took off. Mozart asks me when I last came to the
I reclaim my baggage and then go in search of Sprite. But instead I find my Uncle and Auntie. They stow my luggage and then take me to a nearby restaurant, where I order a mother-fucker-ounce filet steak. And at last a cool glass of Sprite on the rocks is placed before me. I drink it like a free man: no suspicion of being terrorist; no feeling like a prick; no harassment by ethnic minorities; no laser-wielding toilets and no risk of agonising death.
Just a man, his mother-fucker steak, and a glass of Sprite. As I fall asleep that night in the cavernous lounge of my Uncle’s Irving mansion, licked and violated by his four house-cats, I feel that an interesting two weeks is about to come my way.
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