Now I am a terrible flyer. I've known this from a very early age, many, many years before I had even set a single foot onboard an air-o' plane. They are wrong. They just are. As useful as they are for travelling the globe, every time you fly, you are defying one of the most mysterious and powerful forces in the known universe................gravity.
On my return flight to the UK, one of my three return flights, I had the joy of being sat behind a man that was explaining to his wife that it was silly to be nervous about flying, because: "........every part of this plane is designed to fly. It WANTS to fly. It WANTS to be in the air."
It took every ounce of my willpower not to say "But gravity WANTS us to plummet! It WANTS us to fall! And who are we to argue with gravity?"
I'm just not happy with flying.
The take-offs are not too bad as long as I don't look out the window. I don't like seeing us angering gravity with our upwards motion. And once we are up in the air, I will do a deal with anybody who is listening just to keep that plane safe. God, Budha, Satan, Santa, I have mumbled to each and every one of them at one point or another. Yet I realised after my last flight, that at no point do I mumble a prayer to the pilot to get me down safely. Hell, I've even found myself talking to the plane. Every plane I travel on, I pat it as I board and disboard (?). I know that in the grand scheme of things, this action won't make one jot of difference to the outcome of my flight, yet I still find myself patting each plane like it's a horse, and I'm asking it nicely to just keep me alive for the next 7+ hours. But I still find myself taking the pilot for granted. At no point, do I tap on the cockpit door and say to the pilot "Can you try extra hard today, please? I really don't want to die."
He's just doing his job, I guess. And the plane is doing hers.
I think in the UK we say disembark. Or perhaps alight. In the US they say de-plane, which is the kind of word a simpleton would invent. That might sound like an unnecessarily hostile analysis, but my hackles are up after I had to sit through a dinner party this week where my boss and his wife argued that America was the best country in the world. Don't worry, I fought Sweden's corner.
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