WARNING - If you are easily offended, I would advise that you do not read any further. You have been advised, proceed at your own risk and don’t bother to complain, because if you do, I will most likely delete your comments. I have the power!
As I write this, the temperature outside is minus 60C - minus 76F in old money, or American degrees - but then again, I am about 36,000 feet up and still have three hours to go until Manchester.
I am heading home, after two weeks in Tenerife over Christmas 2012. It was my Mother in Law’s idea to go away for Christmas, and she’s been a right royal PITA for a fortnight! Suffice to say I will not be holidaying with her ever again.
Other than the wittering one, the usual crop of “chavs” and other people’s effing kids are driving me to drink, yet again.
Why is it that so many people think it is acceptable to force about three hundred other people to listen to their whining brat for four and a half hours flying time? Not to mention the three hours of “hanging about in bloody airport” time as well.
There is a reason we have kennels you know, next time, leave the noisy little bastard there if you absolutely must have a holiday. (Alternatively, do the environment a huge favour and stop breeding!)
They say travel broadens the mind. I say “Bullshit!”
What travel actually does is remind you of how nice it is to stay at home, with the doors locked, and something decent (with David Attenborough or Professor Brian Cox in it) on TV.
Travel is also a great reminder of just how widespread the UK’s import of the American obesity problem actually is.
If I am allowed only 20Kg luggage allowance and have to pay an extortionate fee for each ounce over my allowance, how come some fat, over-eating, self inflicted - and most likely diabetic - person, who probably weighs three times what I do, gets charged the same price per seat as I do? What about their “excess baggage” charges?
Especially when they think it’s ok for their spare blubber to spill over into my seat? And “do you mind if I raise the seat arm between us so that I can get a bit more comfy?”
Actually, I do effing mind. I paid for a seat on this plane and so did you. You did not pay half my fare so you are not entitled to half my seat space as well as your own. Two words - the second one is “off” and the first rhymes with “truck”! Catch my drift?
Don’t like my attitude? Guess what? I don’t like your blubber spilling over and touching me! You deal with your problem and you might find me a bit more agreeable in future. In fact, you will find me more agreeable, because normally I am a considerate, courteous person - but you have seriously pissed me off!
And smokers, yes you! Your drug habit is your own affair, please keep it that way.
Please do not shut yourself in a telephone box and chain smoke your way through your last 200 because you can’t last all the way home. You stink! You may not know it, but you are tremendously obnoxious to non-smokers as well as other smokers. It’s absolutely disgusting. I may puke very soon! (Or spew, as we Jocks normally say!)
The in flight movie on this trip appears to be something called “Miles To Go”. It is crap.
It has been on since we left - almost two hours ago - and so far, no dialogue. In fact, there has been nothing but what appears to be a satellite view of a small aeroplane, similar to this one, heading roughly North towards Manchester.
I’ve saw something very similar once before when flying to and from, Australia. It was a crap movie then and this latest version has not improved things at all.
(That last bit was supposed to be amusing - it may not have worked!)
I have luckily got extra leg room seats. Well, I say luckily, I paid extra for a seat that can accomodate someone over 4'6" without their knees being somewhere close to their forehead for the duration of the flight.
Surely a plane should have sufficient leg room in every seat?
Mind you, I have to say that the standard cattle class seat on this Thomson Airways Boeing 737-800, has far more leg room than any Monarch flight I’ve ever been on. For an excellent rant on that subject, search this blog for “Monarch”.
Oh great! The obnoxious brat two seats away has now started playing with one of his bloody “musical” toys. Everything he does is now accompanied by plinky-plonky “music” and the seemingly obligitory screaming and high pitched squealing so prevalent amongst children these days.
The “right on” and so called “modern” parents think that whispering “ssh” at the screaming little bar steward is helping. Well they must be deaf, because the little darling is paying them no heed, and continues to wake the other sleeping passengers. People actually want these things? What the fuck for?
Have sex for fun, and stuff the “multiplying” bit so loved by the Roman Catholic Church!
Two more effing hours to go. What with the human whale next to me and that damned kid not far (enough) away - like on another planet - I could be in for a long prison sentence any time soon! I might be out in 15 years or so, if I behave myself.
As for entertainment, there is none. The “in seat” entertainment centre ( a place to plug in your specially purchased headset) has nine channels of total silence, and one of what sounds to me to be a 440 Hz sinusoidal tone. Could be an A but wtf do I know about music? The only thing I play is CDs and the odd parp on my didjeridoo!
The tone sound is, unfortunately, not loud enough to drown (now there’s a thought!) out the din from the wonder child two seats away. I hate him with a vengeance! Not just because of his incredibly ill mannered behaviour, but because the little shit was sat in the same bloody seats on the way out and screamed all the fucking way there as well!
According to the “movie”, we are no longer over the sea and have just made landfall over the Spanish coast, somewhere near, or North, of Vigo.
Did I mention the in flight “meal”? No? I won’t bother then, other than over priced, and tasteless!
The human whale did manage two meals, one after the other, then wiped his hands on the seat in front. Disgusting or what? Not as disgusting as his metronomic farting - fart fart fart fart - every two minutes. Jesus!
Oh excellent! Now we have a “wonderful opportunity” to buy assorted “stuff” from the “duty free” trolley. I think I shall give it a wide berth.
Noise cancelling headphones are great on flights. They really do cancel out most of the din from the airflow and engines. At least my Sony ones do.
Unfortunately, they don’t appear to do anything about screaming kids. Now there’s a market, ready made for a set of headphones that do! I would be first in the queue for those at any price!
I did mention being driven to drink a while back, near the start of this rant. The brandy is not helping much.
I’ve drunk the whole 5Cl “bottle” (which is of course priced similar to a half bottle in normal life) and the screaming brat is no easier to bear.
Over the North coast of Spain now, heading up towards Biscay, and they have decided to add in some turbulence. That isn’t helping the brat, nor my typing!
Travel sucks! And I hate it. However, my wife loves it and the threat of divorce finds me stuck on yet another stressful commercial flight. (If I could afford my own plane, say a Honda Jet, I would travel more often but driving myself!)
Another child has just wandered past. He too is sitting two seats away. The difference is, he is quiet, well behaved and a credit to his parents. I can almost see the appeal - but there’s no way I will ever, ever, have a child!
Heading towards Brest in France now, some way to go, but for some reason, the turbulence has stopped and so has the screaming child from hell. How long can the peace and quiet possibly last I wonder?
As it happens, oops - shades of Jimmy Savile there - not long. The demon son of Satan’s cat has started squealing again. 30 seconds was the answer.
And now the battery in my noise cancelling headphones is dwindling and the cancellation is fading in and then cutting out. How positively irritating! I wonder how much worse this flight can get.
An hour to go. Is it worth trying to sleep? You never know, sleep might calm me down. They have just dimmed the cabin lights. Let’s see if it works. Wish me luck.
Happy New Year - if it comes! ;-) Here’s to a peaceful, child free 2013.
