The Many Irritations of Flying

I like travelling except for the actual travel part. I suspect I’m not alone, but let me explain. I love heading abroad to new and exciting countries but the whole getting there part drives me insane. I’ve travelled a fair amount and I’m sure I’m well into triple figures in terms of the numbers of flights I’ve been on. I’m also sure I cannot remember the last pleasurable one.

It all starts with the airport. There isn’t a close one to me, so I invariably have to get up at some ungodly hour and drive eighty miles in the middle of the night to be allowed to check in three days before the flight’s actually due to leave. Once there you’re also presented with the privilege of paying almost as much as the cost of the flight in order to park the car a 20-minute bus ride from the actual airport. Of course, at 4am the buses only pick up every fifteen minutes too, so you’d better hope it’s not raining.

I perfectly understand why airlines want you there early because if they said “It’ll be fine if you turn up ten minutes before your flight” you would still get simpletons who thought that ten minutes was two minutes. However, don’t make me turn up three hours early and then think you can use it as a cost cutting exercise by only opening one check-in counter for five flights. If I wanted to queue for an hour I’d try and get out of Wembley after an England football match.

Here’s some advice; when asked whether you packed your bag yourself, it’s not original or funny to quip that a Muslim gentleman kindly helped while you went to the toilet. It’s also not original for the purveyor of said joke to be dragged away to have a fist shoved up his arse either, but the staff will find that part funny at least. Sensibly, you should stick to a rigid ‘yes/no’ answer formula and head through to security... where you have the pleasure of queuing again.

Since the rise in terrorist attack attempts at airports it’s fair to say that security take their job seriously. I can’t say that I blame them, although it’s always a minor irritation to be asked to remove random articles of clothing. When was the last time you heard of an AK-47 being concealed in a belt? Anyway, without fail I set off the metal detectors. I then get touched up by a bloke who, following his grope, waves a wand at me which picks up absolutely nothing. This always makes me wonder where in my body the metal is hiding and why I don’t know about it.

Onto the departure lounge and ‘duty free’; the chance to make back some of that cash you’ve been plundered for up until that point. Or not, as the case actually is. Firstly, I always wonder (after I’ve strolled into an electrical shop to marvel at things with flashing lights) who the hell buys a 42” TV on their way to Brazil? Where the hell are they going to put it? I’m damn sure it won’t fit in one of the little baskets they have to check your hand luggage size and it won’t fit in your overhead locker either. Anyway, we all know how manufacturers put RRP prices on things? That’s some fantasy price that they wished they could sell the product for and, coincidentally, is exactly the price that no-one would pay. Well, it’s when you get to ‘duty free’ that these RRP prices are plastered everywhere. Because if something has an RRP of £49.99 and ‘duty free’ are selling it for £42.99 then you’re getting a bargain. Unless, of course, it can be had for £39.99 at your local shop and a fiver cheaper still on the internet.

Eventually you’ll be ripped off for some average food and you’ll sit and watch the TV screens, waiting for your flight to be called to its gate. When it is you will witness the biggest rush of sheep imaginable. Assuming your flight isn’t with the cheapest of the cheap airlines your boarding card will have a seat number on it. That’s your seat and no-one else’s. It’s not first come, first served and as long as you don’t actually miss the flight, it’ll still be yours ten minutes after the boarding call’s gone out. I generally sit at the gate, continuing to read my book, as the rest of the flight has almost beaten each other to death in the rush to be the first in the massive queue to board. Why do it? Feel free to stand in another queue for ten minutes for all I care. When that queue diminishes to one or two people I’ll take a leisurely walk up, but even then I won’t rush. You know why? Because you hand in your boarding card, take the walk towards the plane and there’ll be another queue.

What’s this queue for? Well, that’s the queue for your seat and it’s unavoidable unless you really were the first person in the last queue. The reason? People are stupid. Space on planes is fairly limited and that means they don’t have sweeping, spacious corridors to move around in. Therefore aeroplane etiquette apparently dictates that if you’re the first person aboard you should stand in the middle of the aisle while you comically fail to put bags in overhead lockers and rummage around for your book, iPod and pack of Werthers’ Originals. Take no heed to the three hundred people that you’re stopping getting to their seats, they don’t mind. If you’re the second person in the queue, you should stand and wait impatiently, before doing exactly the same thing when you reach your seat. And so on.

Eventually I’ll reach my seat and it will be a window seat. You know why? There are a couple of reasons, and none of them are the “I like to see the sky!” one you might be expecting. Firstly, I’m not a girl and consequently I don’t have a thimble sized bladder which requires me to visit the toilet every six minutes. Get seated between one of those people and the aisle and you’ll know what I mean. You just get settled, about to nod off to sleep, and BAM! “Sorry, can I just squeeze past again please?” I once did a round the world trip, stopping in twelve countries and taking a huge number international and domestic flights. In the whole time I went to the toilet once on a plane (and it was on a twelve hour flight). I have self control (unless there's beer involved).

The next reason for blagging the window seat is simple dynamics; it literally halves the number of elbows you’re likely to be clobbered with. We’ve established that planes aren’t big. The more seats the airline crams onboard, the more money they make. So, sit in the middle of two people and you’ll come out the other side with bruised ribs. Or, worse still, you’ll double your chances of being next to a person that cannot physically sit still. Once again, just as you’re nodding off to sleep his arm will whack yours as he attempts to re-arrange his blanket for the thirteenth time, drops his book or decides he needs to read his broadsheet newspaper at full width.

“Aha”, I hear you say, what if you grab the aisle seat? Wrong again. Do that and you can look forward to a flight where you get continually smacked in the arm or shoulder (or both) by stewardesses and their trolleys. And fat people.

The one thing you likely won’t get away from (in economy class at least), is the fool seated behind you. After having shoved your seat back and forth so he can get to the glossy mags stuffed down the back he will then use your seat to pull himself to his feet on his constant trips to the toilet (or to ‘stretch his legs’… on a two hour flight for God’s sake). The seat is bolted to the floor, you’d hope, but that doesn’t stop it rocking back several inches every time someone pulls ninety kilos to their feet because their legs have inexplicably stopped working. For the same ‘non-functioning leg’ reason they will, upon returning to their seat, not lower themselves down as any normal person would. They’ll simply assume the position and collapse. When the person in front of you does this you can look forward to your dinner bouncing off its tray and into your lap.

Oh, I nearly forgot; children. Under no circumstances should kids be allowed on planes until they can prove they can sit still for the duration of the flight without crying, shouting, screaming or throwing things around. If I wanted to see kids do that I wouldn’t be jetting off to another country, I’d be at home.

What’s the issue with simple instructions, by the way? ‘Turn off your phone as it might interfere with the plane’s navigation and communication equipment’ surely isn’t that hard to comprehend? I’m not saying that I buy into the reasoning for a second, in the same way that, despite being told, I don’t turn off my mobile phone at petrol stations because I’ve yet to see any proof that an incoming text message will cause the nearest petrol pump to explode. However, I’m fairly sure that my network provider’s coverage does not extend to 37,000 feet over the Atlantic and to that end it makes no difference to me if it’s turned off; no-one’s going to be able to call me. And yet, your flight will come in to land (you know the crucial bit where, if it’s going to go wrong that’s where it’ll happen) and you’ll hear the familiar ‘bleep, bleep’ of incoming text messages from a couple of imbeciles who need to have their message delivered one minute faster and to hell with the (alleged) risk of ending up in a fiery grave in the middle of the runway.

Having written all this has anyone considered that the 9/11 terrorists weren’t actually terrorists but normal travellers who had been pushed beyond the brink of rational behaviour and decided to end it for them all?

Anyway, the flight lands and, in another display proving that people cannot think more than two minutes into the future, everyone jumps to their feet, grabbing for their bags… so they can stand in the aisle for ten minutes. I'm yet to witness a plane screeching to a halt and with the doors instantaneously flying open. Once again, I’ll stay seated (and undisturbed because I’m at the window seat) until people are actually getting off the plane but there is still no need to rush. When was the last time you reached baggage claim and your bags were there waiting? No, it’s never happened to me either. In fact, when has the conveyor belt even been turned on? Why people expect that the baggage throwers handlers can get the bags to the terminal faster than the passengers can run is beyond me.

Here’s one thing about airports which only seems to count if you’re British. When you land in a foreign country the country in question has the good manners to funnel its own nationals through passport control as fast as possible. It’s a perk, right? After all it’s your own country and you’re the one paying taxes. I’ve seen it countless time when I’ve landed in a foreign country to a huge queue at passport control while the local nationals breeze through. That is not a complaint, since I would expect it. I would expect it at home, except I’m British and it seems we’re far too polite (or stupid) to save our own citizens some time. No, a British national lands at a British airport and can look forward to huge queues while the foreigners sprint through some kind of express passport control.

Back to instructions and not being able to follow them. In a museum (I’m told that’s where they keep old stuff), if you slap a sign on something saying “do not touch”, people will whack their mucky paws all over it. There are many similar examples but the one that irritates me most is baggage claims. The concept is really simple. You stand behind the yellow line and when your bag comes round you step forward and take it from the belt. It really is not that hard.

What happens in reality? Everyone pushes forward to the edge of the conveyor belt, so close that their feet are wedged underneath it. This means that the people behind, who understood the concept of not being impatient morons, can’t see anything. The muppet who is front of you, never straying more than half an inch from the belt for fear of his bag being lost forever, then proceeds to pick up (and inspect) virtually every suitcase that passes him. It’s made all the more absurd by the fact that he eventually selects his distinctive blue holdall, after having scrutinised every green or black case that passed him – just to make sure. Those pesky baggage throwers may have swapped his case, just for a laugh.

All this means, of course, that not only do others struggle to see their bags but they also have to push past a dozen people to get to them – none of whom want to move and lose ‘their spot’.

On my last trip through Gatwick airport I developed a solution to this particular annoyance. You place a number of guards on each belt... armed with cattle prods. Once you cross that yellow line you have ten seconds to retrieve your bag otherwise you get a stab of electricity to the base of your skull. Sure, the rest of us might have to clamber over a few bodies to eventually collect our bags, but at least we'd be able to see when they were coming.

Clothes Shopping With Women

This one’s not an unusual complaint, I know that much. Who on Earth likes being dragged around multiple shops while your girlfriend or wife individually checks out (what seems to be) every item of clothing for sale in the city?

Blokes, in my experience, are much easier to please in the shopping department. If I need trousers, point me at a decent shop which sells jeans and I’ll come out with a pair. I don’t feel the urge to compare them with every other shop in the county which might sell similar or slightly better jeans. If I like them, I get those ones. Better still, give me a computer and internet connection and I'll order them at home while I'm having a beer.

Women? A woman goes into a shop, finds a top she likes, changes her mind about whether to buy it half a dozen times and then leaves. She’ll then proceed to visit every shop in town, contrasting and comparing. Finally, four hours after she started, she’ll head back to that first shop and buy the very first one she was looking at. If you're really unlucky you’ll have been dragged along for the trip and it’s a journey of despair.

My wife’s not as bad as most but, to my consternation, she catches me out every now and again. Women are devious:

“Fancy popping into town, maybe get that film we were looking at?”

That’ll catch out most men, but I really ought to know better by now. We drive into town, park up and within fifty feet of the car park she’ll “just want nip in this shop for a minute.” That ‘minute’, in reality, is five. And ‘this shop’ actually means ‘all the shops of this type within a forty minute hike’.

I’ve even tried, in desperation, going down the 'being the annoying and embarrassing husband’ route. I loudly point out inappropriate clothing, suggest which items she’d look slutty in, make disparaging comments about styles and prices etc. For a while I started trying things on. It began with hats but, admittedly, I stopped short of lacy underwear. None of it worked. She’d roll her eyes in a way which all her fellows shoppers knew and understood. They don't fall for the same crap from their boyfriends or husbands either.

I guess the obvious solution would be to do the same to her – drag her around a million shops because that’ll give her some empathy with what I’m going through, right? Not a chance. She’d diligently follow me around being genuinely helpful and making useful suggestions. I’d get bored long before she did.

I think it’s partially because she gets an honest opinion. You must know what I’m talking about. Your lady tries on a piece of clothing and she loves it, she’s thrilled it fits and it’s just what she’s been looking for. Naturally she asks your opinion… and you hate it. Me? I’ll give it to her straight and tell her it makes her look like a malnourished zebra. Now, I’ve been accused of being insensitive around this subject by others but what do girls want? A ‘yes man’? Maybe. They’d better not ask me then because they’ll just get my opinion, warts and all. But this is not a bad thing. When I tell my wife she looks great in something she knows I really do think that. Surely that’s better than wondering why I say everything is ‘nice’? Of course it is.

Anyway, what is my course of action to escape shopping trips? The easiest one – I refuse to go on anywhere near a shopping centre without clear definitions on which shops are being visited. I know, I know, it sounds very draconian and devoid of any spontaneity but I’ve had all of that sucked out of me by repeated trips around places which all stock exactly the same apparel. It could be worse for her, I could mutiny on one of her trips and head to the nearest pub. That’d very quickly stop her inviting me along.

Addendum: You couldn’t make it up. I originally wrote the above moan on a Friday evening (rock and roll lifestyle all the way for me) and guess what happened the very next day? That’s right, I was tricked into clothes shopping. Again. I’m such a sucker.

We had some vouchers that were given to us as gifts and the nearest store was a couple of towns away so we (eventually) decided we should head over there. It just so happened that her favourite clothes shop in the whole world happened to be opposite. You can fill in the blanks yourself. It’s made worse by the fact that I had to entertain the two month old baby (in the pushchair which doesn’t fit down any bloody aisle) as she strolled about seemingly grabbing items at random. This is all true, I promise you. She walked to the changing rooms (eventually) where they normally provide you with a numbered token which matches how many articles you’re trying on. This means that if you have two items you’ll get a number two token and you can’t get away with stuffing a blouse down your pants in the changing room and claiming you only ever had one item. The highest number they had was a token with ‘four’ on it and my wife had ten items of clothing. Ten. There’s no help for me and, according to our wedding vows, I have a lifetime of this. I’ve read the small print too and there’s no get out clause for excessive shopping.

Children

I'm going to surprise no-one by ranting a bit here but, no, this is not a pop at children per se (no matter how irritating the ones which belong to lawless chavs seem to be). This is my observation as it revolves around the human species in general: a human baby is born and, to all intents and purposes, it is useless. Very useless. And it is useless for years.

You can pick any other creature in the animal kingdom and compare the two. There are loads of examples of animals being born, stumbling through their early minutes of life and then jumping to their feet and wandering off to look for food. This happens all in the space of about half an hour. Human baby? Not so good. It requires constant attention and doesn’t even get off its backside or bother learning how to communicate properly for years. Even when they do they’re incapable of caring or providing for themselves for many, many years after that. Granted, our civilisation’s a touch more complicated than that of a horse but it makes you wonder how children got by at the dawn of mankind.

Now, I know that many species have a much shorter life span than homo sapiens (the Mayfly is lucky to reach a day so it has to learn pretty quickly), but there are plenty of animals with a similar lifespan which don’t need their hands (paws? Hoofs?) holding for years before they get to grips with the elementary basics.

In the UK the legal age for being able to have a paper round is 12. Now I can understand that children are not necessarily equipped to deal with the dangers of odd men in raincoats with bags of gummy bears but it’s not the only reason. It seems they can’t be trusted to cross the road without decorating the front of a truck. Well, again, this proves the hopelessness of human young. No-one helps out the newborn rabbit by allowing it a couple of years to get a grip on its surroundings and suss out which animals are likely to rip its throat out. Added to which, those predators will purposely do that, whereas the tabloid-reading, arse-flashing truck driver would probably prefer you didn’t clog his wheels with bits of your intestine.

Anyway, 12 also appears to be the age at which children can be left alone in the house. There’s less chance of them being approached by Gary Glitter in your front room and, unless you’re really unlucky, they’re unlikely to be in danger from an eighteen wheeled Scania. Apparently though, if they’re any younger, they will spend their time jamming forks into electrical sockets, testing the toaster’s ability to float and creating a helter-skelter on the stairs from step ladders and garden forks. It’s hopeless. Survival of the fittest I say; leave them to it and let Darwin decide... except for my young children. They're wrapped in cotton wool and are not leaving the house until they're at least twenty.

Cinema

I love the cinema, I really do (with the possible exception of 3D). There’s nothing better than the excitement of sitting and watching a new movie you’ve been looking forward to on the big screen. Unfortunately, as a generalisation, I dislike people and I’ve yet to purchase my own private cinema. This creates a big issue for me.

When I watch a film I want to be engrossed in it. I mean completely caught up and immersed, and that involves absolute silence outside of the sound of the film itself and no distractions. If the director had wanted me to hear someone rustling popcorn, he’d have added it to the soundtrack. When I watch a new film at home the lights get turned off, the dog gets kicked out and the volume goes through the roof. There will be no external noise until the end credits. Luckily (for both of us) my wife is on-board with this. Sadly, none of the cinema going public is.

Why do people spend the money to go to the cinema only to chat through a movie? It’s a genuine question as I really can’t work it out. Go to the bloody pub; it’s a place designed especially for socialising and the money you spent on the cinema ticket will pay for your drinks! If you don’t like that idea then stay at home. You can talk as loudly as you like and it won’t cost you a penny. Idiots.

I have, in my time, asked many people in cinemas to stop talking. In fact I went through a stage where it happened more often than not. I was particularly impressed when my wife did it on three consecutive visits. I once went to see The Thin Red Line with an ex-girlfriend. Anyone who’s seen it will probably have been impressed with the choreography and beautiful sweeping shots which, for a war film, might be considered unusual. (It was nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar.) I think the pensioners in front of me thought they’d come to watch something different, but that didn’t stop them “ooohhh”ing and “ahhh”ing every five minutes. It didn’t take long for me to ask (politely) if they could refrain from talking. And they did. My girlfriend? Furious. Apparently they had paid money and should be allowed to enjoy the film however they like. If I didn’t like then I should have moved. She was obviously unaware that purchasing a ticket doesn’t give carte blanche rights to ruin everyone else’s experience. Anyway, I think she’d have changed her tune if I’d flopped my tackle out and starting rubbing myself off the next time Kate Beckinsale appeared in a film, but the principle’s the same.

When the new Star Wars film came out I heard about a guy in America who purchased all the tickets to one showing. He had the entire cinema to himself. He was ridiculed online and people were making comments about how the atmosphere is the best thing. Yes, it is, but I want the FILM's atmosphere, not a bunch of imbeciles whooping and hollering at the screen and ruining the movie's ambiance. If I'd had the cash, I'd have done exactly the same thing.

Another ex-girlfriend went with me to watch The Usual Suspects, a truly brilliant movie. I was captivated and she was bored. Not only was she bored but she didn’t have a watch. This meant she grabbed my wrist every five minutes to check the time. I still believe to this day I’d have been well within my rights to punch her in the face.

Having the back of your chair kicked constantly is never much fun and I’m sure most of you will agree with me there. I know there’s not much legroom but do you really want someone’s sized eleven, muddy, Doc Martins tapping away an inch from your shoulder? No, me neither.

Tall people can’t help being tall but that’s no excuse for an eight foot basketball player to study an empty cinema before deciding the seat he wants is right in front of me. If it happens again I might take some scissors and start cutting his hair so I can see around him. I went to a great screen, many years ago, in Slough (I knew the place must have had at least one thing going for it). It was so steeply raked that a giraffe sitting in front of a midget wouldn’t have blocked his view. Honestly though, it was so steep that after a long film I got up too quickly and nearly pitched forwards. I’d have ended up five rows closer to the screen with a broken collarbone and a tub of popcorn on my head.

I briefly mentioned the eaters but I didn’t do it justice. To be honest I’d be happy if they banned eating in the cinema. It’s not going to happen, obviously, as that’s where cinemas make the most of their money. I’d be happy with a compromise though (i.e. only allowing the sale of items which it’s impossible to make a distracting noise with). People with popcorn seem incapable of picking pieces up and eating them, they need to rustle around continually, seemingly searching for the perfectly formed corn. They’re not as bad as the people who chose the individually wrapped sweets from the foyer shop though. Excellent. Not only do they rustle the bag around (“Eww. I don’t like the yellow ones!”) they also make a racket while they’re unwrapping each bloody sweet. A woman at a recent showing did this and then proceeded to continue folding the empty sweet wrappers in the dark, like some origami Jedi. I almost stabbed her in the eye with the straw from my drink. Yes, much of this links back to my misophonia but I'm not taking the blame for people interrupting me while I'm consciously trying to listen to something that I've paid for.

Finally, yes, you guessed it; children. Film studios have cottoned on to the fact that if they keep the certificate rating low more people will see it, because it’s open to a wider audience. Gone are the days of the 80s when all action films were 18-rated. Now they all seem to be 15 or, worse, 12A. This means you have to go at midnight (and contend with possible drunks) or else risk the wrath of a gazillion noisy kids. I went to see Casino Royale at the cinema, Daniel Craig’s excellent first outing as Bond. The film was rated 12A. Sat next to us with a bloke (who was obviously too tight to fork out for a baby-sitter) and two bored kids. The film’s almost two and a half hours long and they spent most of it getting up, sitting down, talking and rolling around on the floor under the screen. The benefit of dealing with small children is that after I asked them to pack it in and shot them a stern gaze they didn’t make a sound. Give it a couple of years and they'd probably have knifed me. Meanwhile, their dad was unaware, the ignoramus.

I hate all these complaints, with a passion, and yet it’s not (quite) enough to keep me away.