John Butlertells one of the worst - and funniest - flying stories we've ever heard
One of the most valuable commodities in modern life is space, the distance created between self and fellow man. The pursuit of a happy life involves getting away from other people as often, and in as many different ways, as possible. A house on private grounds is more expensive than an apartment. You have to know someone to get the best table at a restaurant, the one in splendid isolation. Nobody sits beside somebody in an empty room.
A first-class seat on an aircraft costs a few thousand euro, but it's so much better than flying economy, and when I fly I use every trick in the book - short of palming over cash - to get on the right side of that nylon curtain. I'm not doing it for complimentary champagne or an extra pillow. I'm looking for personal space, for everyone's sake.
This little obsession of mine stems from an incident on a flight a couple of years ago that I can only now bear to recount. I was flying long-haul. I was a nervous flyer back then, believing there to be something worth living for, and I had a fistful of sedatives prescribed by a doctor to calm my nerves. Upon boarding I saw I had been assigned the worst seat, in the middle of the middle row right at the back of economy. What could I do? This was going to be hell whatever way you cut it.
I took my (large, heavy) book from the overhead locker, sat down and belted up, with the book on my lap. To my left, perhaps five centimetres away, sat a chatty English couple in their 60s. To my right, three centimetres away, sat a very large, very lonely American businessman.
After a few minutes of inane banter about getting to know each other better, and how there was "nowhere to run", I decided to press the psychic eject button. I took my medication and raised my book in front of my face. I don't know if there's a clearer indication that you don't want to talk than downing tranquillisers in plain view and then pretending to read. But as the aircraft climbed into the sky the people on either side continued talking to me. As I tried to focus on the words on the page I realised that I had underestimated the strength of my medication. This was a long book. I wasn't going to make it to the end of the . . .
I'd say it was somewhere over Greenland when I came to, with the kind of spasm you get when you dream you're falling out of bed. My arms shot out to support myself, and I briefly registered I was sitting in an aircraft before falling into another deep, narcotic slumber. The whole thing took 20 seconds.
What seemed like moments later the stewardess shook me awake to say that we were landing and that I should return my seat back to the upright position. I was surprised: time had flown. I looked around and noticed that the gentleman from the seat to my left was nowhere to be seen. I also sensed a frosty vibe from his wife, two seats away. I smiled at her. Nothing.
"Is he landing the aircraft for us?" I joked.
"No, he's being seen to by the doctor, actually."
Glare.
"What happened?" I asked kindly.
She looked away.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to the large businessman on the other side; he'd been waiting hours to talk about this.
"Hey, you broke that guy's nose back there."
I looked at him incredulously.
"I did what?"
"Yeah, dude. You woke up a couple of hours ago, and you threw your arm out, and you smashed his nose open with the spine of your book. It was pretty wild."
Wild? It was grievous bodily harm. And the insult I had added to his injury was sleeping like a lamb while they shouted for tissues, called for a doctor, moved the wounded man out of his seat and calmed passengers down.
I saw the man in a wheelchair at Heathrow and tried to explain, as I had to his wife, but they were convinced it was malicious, and I don't blame them. Every nudge, every brush, every minor imposition is major when you are herded like cattle into economy, and I'm surprised more people don't snap. It's wrong how little space there is back there, and it seems the ultimate cruelty that we live in a society that allows us to take tranquillisers to help us sleep but doesn't provide beds in the only place most people take them. This is the true cause of air rage.
It only takes a stroll down the aisle of any commercial flight to figure out just how rampant the use of tranquillisers is in air travel. These people aren't sleeping. They're not tired or worn out from getting to the airport. They are destroyed, strewn across stranger's laps, their lolling tongues stuck to decade-old acrylic seat covers. It's a gruesome sight, as if someone had tiptoed through a battle scene putting complimentary eye masks on the wounded. And all this when, metres away, in first class, people are being fanned with ostrich feathers, fed grapes and bathed in Cristal.
The inside of an aircraft is a microcosm of the world at large, and life is unfair. But we should make a few changes to economy air travel just to hide this awful truth. Keep your peanuts, I say. Keep your advertorial magazine. Keep your censored movie and the weird little meal with the spork. All I'm looking for is a little spatial empathy, somewhere to get my head down, for everyone's sake.
John Butler's blog is at http://lozenge.wordpress.com