My Norway trip is over.
There was something slightly ominous about being on a plane on the anniversary of September 11th (I think it would be good if all events were known by their date, rather than what happened. It would make it much easier to remember the anniversary. Thus my birthday could be known as the event of July 12th and you'd all remember to send me a present. Admittedly we'd only get 366 of these, but I think my birthday would still be in it. The news of the day would start. "And so it's the 37th anniversary of the event of 7/12 and crowds have gathered at the hospital in Westow in Yorkshire to commemorate the event. Many are in tears. Others are just wondering what the rest of the crowd are doing there and have hung around to see what's happening. There is some confusion"), but I suppose the one positive thing is that now rather than being scared of a common or garden plane crash, I am only scared of being involved in a terrorist incident. So that's one fear overcome (though admittedly only to be replaced by something much worse, but beggars can't be choosers). I'm not suggesting that this unremarkable and meaningless consequence of the events of 9/11 (can we try and get that renamed 11/9 do you think? Our way of doing the date is correct. I don't want to be insensitive, but I think we should set up a massive campaign to get the Americans to change to the proper system, at least for this one date. It might upset some people, but some times the truth is more important than people's feelings. Americans seem to be aware of that more than any of us) in any way compensates for the loss of life on the day, or in the wars that have followed, but it's important to look for the positive in every situation.
Even if it is ultimately much more of a negative.
As usual I had several candidates for potential terrorists. I don't go for people of Middle Eastern appearance any more.Al Quaida are much too clever to do something so obvious. My latest theory is that fat people are the obvious threat. I reckon Osama Bin Laden has probably watched "The Nutty Professor" and seen Eddie Murphy in his fat suit and realised that he can use that technology to make a thin person appear like a fat person, and pack the interior of the fat costume with high explosives. If the sniffer dogs go for a fat person, the security guards will just assume it's because they can smell sausage fat emanating from their every pore and let them get on the plane.
You may think I'm being fanciful, but one day you'll see that I am right.
On this flight I was sitting next to the two dullest men in the world. They talked non-stop for the entire flight about their mundane jobs in excruciating detail and in annoyingly loud voices. One of the men was particularly dull and had a grating monotone voice. His words just washed over me after a while, and made me feel physically sick and I wondered what would happen if I just turned to him and said, "Will you just shut up for one second? Please!"
I thought he'd probably be upset and I was too polite to say anything. Though every time the more annoying one discussed the internal workings of his firm's computer system and prefixed his remark with the word "Interestingly", I would whisper, "No, it isn't interesting. There really is nothing interesting about what you're saying. So why not stop talking about it or at least talk about it much more quietly." Unfortunately my comments were drowned out by his bellowing voice.
Of course, two men are welcome to discuss business on their flight (though personally I think there should be a law that you have to be in business class to do this), but it was just so relentless, so boring and so constant. It's quite difficult to talk non-stop for two hours, even in the tag team arrangement that these two were employing, but they completely managed to carry on.
The worst one of the two also suffered from the disillusion that he was a bit of a laugh and popular at work (I think they did training for the police or something. I had lost the will to live). He wasn't. The best joke I remember is that he referred to one of his more bossy female colleagues as "the rottweiler". Hilarious.
To be honest I would have preferred to be sitting next to the shouting child who had been in the next aisle on my flight over.
I noticed the more annoying man had a wedding ring on his chubby fingers. Someone was married to this. For somebody this was a daily reality. Poor cow.
Then I became suspicious. No-one could possibly remain married to this man. The wedding ring was fake. His fingers were chubby. He was fat. Those flabby folds of skin were just latex packed with plastic explosives.
We were doomed.
But my death and the death of everyone on the plane seemed a small price to pay for shutting the man up.
As it happens he didn't blow up. The explosives must have been dampened by the inevitable sweat. But it won't be long before the terrorists have overcome that design flaw.
Happy flying.
