Made in England
Saturday, August 12th, 2006Back in England and just about recovered.
Wednesday I left Utah at around 11.30am flying off to Atlanta. A nice enough 4 hour flight. I talked to a 77 year old Mormon lady with 73 grandkids. She made a point of visiting all each year and giving each a present as well. We worked out that was almost once every five days. Madness quite frankly.
On getting into Atlanta I made sure to top up my already pretty high levels of wine utilising a massively overpriced airport bar. Hey its the only way to sleep on the maddening 9 hour transatlantic leg.
We were delayed however, not due to International terror chumps, but to plain old mother nature. A pretty nasty storrm rumbled around Atlanta airport closing the worlds busiest (in terms of people) airport down. It took around 2 hours and copious internments in the nearby smoking lounge until we were ready to board.
As the flight was ready to leave I noticed three empty seats behind my full row of three. After checking with a friendly air hostess and reaching 20,000 feet I scrambled back and claimed my prize; three whole unused seats for my own luxuriating pleasure. Score! Although they were at the very back pf thee aircraft and consequentially by the time the food trolley reached me for dinner all the good food had ran out ( I didnt fancy cheese with cheese sauce). No matter, they gave me free wine. Double score!
The flight was pretty mundane, the only nuisance was the horriffic, nay life un-affirming Mission Impossible 3. Don’t get me wrong, I rewatched Die Hard 3 two weeks ago and found it a pretty enjoyable romp albeit instantly forgettable flick. So I am by no means a pretentious action flim hater.
MI3 was poorness of the highest order, I never realised just how poor an actor Tom Cruise was (or how clarifying wine is). Maybe I haven’t seen him for a good few years and have since grown even more cynical than ever. Whatever the case, woe betide anyone who mentions this film positively to me in friendly conversation (I quite proudly managed to keep in my utter disgust for Serenity quiet (oops slipped out)). They will be met with rambling rants of the epic heights of my incoherance.
I digress. I drank wine and rotated through my ipod, book and my laptop (failing to beat it at chess once) before uncomfortably and unsuccessfully trying to realise a suitable way to employ three airline seats to sleep upon. I ended up just slumping in the traditional arthritis causing heap that is fractured airline slumbering.
We arrived in Manchester a good two hours late, passport control being somewhat more rigourous and therefore 20 minutes more boring. Only after collecting my bags, meeting my Dad and tearful Mum did I find out about the new airplane madness.
And what can you say about that? Not much to be honest. My initial reaction was one of anger before quickly calming down . Strangely at no point did I feel ‘terrorised’, more of a bring it on mentality. Perhaps that’s the British nature. I guess we don’t flap about like headless chickens under such adversity, probably a hangover war mentality. I don’t really know; I do know that whatever they may try to generate terror wise will mostly fail with the majority of English. Been there seen that.
I had almost gotten used to the present level of security at US airports (the UK has always been very lax in comparison from my experience). This new threat will only surely serve to make long haul flying more of a pain than it already is. Even before Tom Cruise.