The curious case of the missing in-flight entertainment

La la la – holidays have been and gone, and I am currently (and unsuccessfully) trying to rid my head of thoughts involving impending work tomorrow. Bah humbug, just thought about it again.

Anyway, I had spectacularly uneventful journeys to and from the UK. I was seated between two lanky Chinese teens to London, with no TV, as the damn system wasn’t working properly. Apparently it’s not something they can sort out mid air. Shame really, because I had visions of one of the air stewards (or stewardesses) gamely trussed-up in a harness, being slowly lifted out of the body of the plane into mid-air and, astronaut-like, precariously fixing the wiring though some external cat-flap device. Though Christ knows what a cat flap would be doing in the fuselage of a plane, because Mr. Tibbins (the cat) is hardly going to pop out for a day’s mousing and come back in again, is he?

Strangely, those gloriously inept morons at BA seem to have the skills at their disposal to transport 300 people in a giant metal tube, but can’t fix some glitch in the electrical TV system. It does make me wonder what else is beyond their powers… and certainly explains the shambolic and infamous inauguration of Heathrow’s ridiculously mis-managed Terminal 5. Plus, this was the second time this had happened to me chez BA – am I unlucky or is there a Grinch in the system? Is it those evil pixies again?

Arriving at Terminal 5 was equally frustrating, as we waited silently for 40 minutes for our luggage, to THEN be told there would be a delay (it eventually arrived after 1.5 hours). No shit, Sherlock. The irony wasn’t lost on the crowd, as they spontaneously erupted into a round of mock-applause. I do love that staple British sarcastic slow clap that happens when either someone says something so hideously moronic it deserves capital punishment, or when some poor over-worked waitress breaks a precariously-balanced plate in the kitchen. On the one hand, it’s a deserved response to the idiocy of bureaucracy and awful pseudo-customer-care, and on the other hand it’s a cruel taunt to someone who’s probably now going to have her wages docked, AND is ready to burst into tears at any moment. As if having to endure the fiery indignance of a terminally irritable chef wasn’t enough. I’ve done my brief stint at waitressing, and I HATED every fraction of a second of it. As soon as I hear those tinkling sounds of plate-on-tile, I feel an urgent need to A) clean the bloody stuff up, and B) hug the poor soul who will no doubt be getting mercilessly berated by some unforgiving swine from sweaty kitchen-land.

The other thing I hate? Well, OK - I passionately HATE sitting between people in a flight. I can't bear flying unless I'm in an aisle seat. No degree of language could convey my immense mental pain at the thought of 12 hours trapped, flanked, by other sweaty individuals. So the prosect of no re-gurgitated, vaguely-amusing TV entertainment to divert such thoughts was doubly tortuous. NO UGLY BETTY! Nooooooo! Lord, shudder the thought.

I think (never mind I think, I bloody well KNOW) what makes the issue so compellingly awful for me is the ridiculous frequency with which I need to pee. I had to ask the lanky girl on the aisle seat to get up at least 4 or 5 times mid-flight, twice rousing her from a deep sleep. She positively HATED me. She even dared to glare at me at the baggage reclaim, to which I responded with an uncharitable death stare. And she just keeled-over, there and then. Thunk. I pointed to some unsavoury looking character shuffling off, and exclaimed "Oh no! He's escaping!". No-one suspected a thing, much like the way no-one actually realises Miss Marple is a psychopathic serial killer, because she just looks so, well, sweet. Evil witch. Anyway, my rationale was that she could have swapped seats with me, especially when it became apparent that my loo visits were going to be as regular as that harridan Gillian McKeith on prune juice. The fact she was inconvenienced a few times, well, that’s her tough shit.

Anyway, to compound that fact, I also get incredibly painful trapped wind while flying. I like to call it flight-induced wind (makes it sound almost plausible as a genuine disease, or merely an effect of aero-dynamics). I could call it FW for short? It could also stand for F*****g Wind (which is what I say)… or add an ‘i’ and become FIW, which spelled backwards becomes WIF …. And by Christ it can. Sometimes. Thankfully, it isn’t actually whiffy on planes, because it isn’t the by-product of something unpleasant decomposing in my guts, but rather, just the results of sitting too long in a pressurized metal tube. Methinks. So anyway, I like to have a discreet little fart every now and again – which usually rumbles, silently and odourlessly, into the seat.

Sadly, such joys cannot be had when flanked by others, because they would feel the reverberating effects of my actions in their seats. Oh, I would be mortified, especially, if they were then to stand up and announce LOUDLY “Oh-my-God, you vile thing! How dare your break wind in my presence! That NOXIOUS gas that you’re emitting! I think I’m going to be sick!” And promptly faint. Or, something equally melodramatic. I would be publicly humiliated in front of 300 people. I would be banned from flying chez BA forevermore (no real sorrow there, mind). I would be castigated by society, and end my days rummaging through bins in bleak winter, farting gently into a tattered and dirt-thickened overcoat just to feel a faint rush of warmth, ruing the day I dared to expel a little air on a dull and torturous BA flight.

Needless to say, I spent the bloody flight clenching my buttocks harder than a new boy arriving on A-wing at the invitation of Her Majesty’s Prison Service.