So not I
I cannot say where he came from but I
immediately took a dislike to him. There was much to dislike like poking me so
he could get through to use the toilet like his bladder was weak, the word
please had not visited his vocabulary, if ever.
I did not touch the vegetarian dish I was
offered, I had had enough from a month in India, he was soon pointing a finger
expectantly at it, presciently I thought he eventually would so I obliged.
I could only remember Janis Joplin's song
and sing my own lyrics, O Lord, don't ever let me travel coach class again -
the next line will however not be written yet.
Am I to endure another 5 hours of this?
Lord have mercy.
So strange me
Then he gave me an apple, literally
thrust it at me, I could not refuse even with my remonstration that I took it.
Taking apples from strangers forced
together by the improbability of aircraft seating plans is just not safe for
all sorts of reasons.
With my thinking in overdrive after the
second bite I was in bulimia extremis as I mustered all emetic strength I never
knew I had to put whatever I had bitten of the apple in the embrace of blue ice.
It soon dawned on me the accident of fate
that put a Spaniard and an Englishman together, the barrier of language
exacerbated by the lack of social graces of the former.
So naughty us
Dear Lord help my lack of humility and
forgive the snobbishness that so easily befalls me.
A vegetarian Spaniard? Wonders shall
never cease, at which point, nothing more can shock me, maybe I have spoken to
soon, we are 8 hours into the flight by Indian time.
Aren't we there yet? Says the little boy
in me.
There are better ways to travel than
this, I know.
Ah! The captain speaks, Paris in 25
minutes, hoping to land at 5:50AM.
I was asked to fill in a survey, like the
receptionist at the training centre in India opined when I was filling in that
amateur final feedback form they offered me - it is my favourite hobby.
Well, ask for my opinion and you will get
an honest and frank expression of views; surely, that is what they want. I hope
so.
Come think of it; are the couples on the
plane in Paris for a romantic holiday?
I hear the sound of landing gear being
deployed, so there.
2 comments:
Which airline did you travel with? Did you fly directly back to Amsterdam, or did you transit elsewhere?
Whenever I travel, I tend to be singled out by customs and frisked and cross-questioned because they have it in their mind that I'm some sort of drug smuggler (which for the record I'm not).
Now I have been conditioned to expect this whenever I travel. There is not much one can do about it, except answer their questions politely, pack up one's belongings and continue with one's journey.
There is nothing like equal treatment, if there was, then all the passengers on the plane should be subjected to this.
The situation is as it is, and one must learn to accept it gracefully and move on.
Hello CodLiverOil,
I used my airmiles for this trip to India, so I travelled out on KLM direct to New Delhi on Business Class but they were asking for twice the number of airmiles for the return leg on Business so I took Coach Class instead which included a 3-hour stop-over in Paris with Air France from New Delhi and then KLM to Amsterdam.
The world of difference between the classes is amazing, I literally slept in a bed on the way out and could hardly get a 9 degree recline of my seat on the way back apart from sitting 10 in a row when I had upper-deck privacy and personal entertainment etc.
I used to have the customs woes when I lived in the UK, hardly ever here I also avail myself of all those priority things like iris-scan and elite status privilege taking most of the stress out of travel.
There is every need to travel well and comfortably, at least, I have managed to spoil myself that way.
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