Where are the flight attendants? Why aren’t they keeping order? What is this chaotic bollocks?
The seat management leaves a lot to be desired. This is going to be a long, long flight. I try to forget I’ve recently been awarded a first in a maths degree from a prestigious university and that most of my peers have gone to work for sensible companies like Rolls Royce and KPMG in London (where the recession isn’t as bad but sadly the cockney rhyming slang has got way out of hand). Well, actually, I wasalmostawarded a first. I was one point away. I blame the Einstein Away Day. I should have been focused, revising hard, instead of being persuaded to dress as a crazy professor, running around solving nigh-on-impossible problems in Richmond with my fellow classmates.
At last, the flight attendant roars loudly at everyone to move down the aisle and take their seats so that we can take off and get this party started. There’s a huge cheer and suddenly the mood is lifted. Within minutes, it’s as though a J D Wetherspoons has been shot high into the sky with an extended happy hour and an open invitation to take full advantage of all the duty free on offer. I stare blankly at my ticket. A one-way journey to a land filled with boozed up, chain-smoking holidaymakers.
Why am I doing this again?
Oh, that’s right. My catastrophic meltdown in the pub where I ugly-cried and insulted everyone I grew up with. And my mother who is desperate to micromanage my career aspirations with her ‘women like us’ attitude. I breathe out a heavy sigh. I can never go back home. Not until I have proven to myself and my mother that I have what it takes to be a high-flying, jet-setting, adventurous career girl and, crucially, enough time has passed for everyone to forget all about my outburst. Twenty to thirty years should do the trick.
2
I was right. This is the longest, bumpiest flight I’ve ever been on. In all fairness, it is theonlyflight I’ve ever been on. I have been distracting myself from overthinking the laws of gravity as we soar above the clouds in this flimsy aircraft at almost five hundred miles per hour. However, when the clouds clear, the glimpses of green luscious farmland, the rugged shoreline of the British coast giving way to the English Channel, are incredibly picturesque and very soothing.
I snuggle down in my seat, my eyelids drooping. The last few weeks have taken their toll, and I am shattered. I nod off instantly until a scream causes me to jolt violently. Some badly dressed hip-hopper in double denim at the back yells, ‘Mr Loverman’ at the top of his voice and the annoying flight attendant from earlier replies, ‘Shabba!’ as he makes his way down the aisle with the drinks trolley. They wake me from a much needed deep sleep, and yet, as I glance down at the remnants of cartons and plastic pots piled high on my tray table, I have somehow slept through the free in-service flight meal and missed the opportunity to eat… I sniff the air… Regurgitated cat food?
I’m squashed between two passengers who have opted out of politely accepting a meal on my behalf, in favour of drinking since we took off (also piling empty cans of Diet Coke and miniature vodka bottles onto my pull-down table tray while I’ve been asleep) and I’m wondering, once again, whether the decision to leave my boring, cautious, mild mess of a life behind was such a good one.
‘Excuse me,’ says the woman next to me. ‘Can you hold this while I bin these empties?’ She plonks a bundle in my arms, unclips herself and picks up all of the abandoned plastic cups and Coke tins to take with her.
I stare down at the bundle. It’s a sleeping infant. It looks barely a few months old and yet it is enormous and seems to be wearing a novelty wig. I had assumed the lady next to me was huddling a backpack on her knee. ‘What do I do if it wakes up?’
She looks at me like I’m mad. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, scurrying away from me down the aisle. ‘They don’t come with any instructions.’
‘Big baby,’ the woman next to me in the window seat remarks. ‘Nice round head though. My first had a huge dent in his frontal lobe. Horrific it was.’ She emits a throaty laugh. ‘Looked like I’d taken a sledgehammer to him.’
‘I can imagine,’ I say, silently pleading with her not to divulge any further information. I’m way out of my depth and likely to hurl. I’d rather work in an abattoir than yank babies from torn vaginas. I’m still disturbed from a statistical thinking class when a lecturer told us that the heaviest baby born was recorded at 22lbs. For context, that’s equivalent to a baby rhino.
‘But I don’t like to talk about it.’
‘Talk about what?’ the returning mother asks, plonking herself down as she scoops her baby from my arms.
‘Childbirth.’
‘Oh, me neither.’
The woman on my right then proceeds to describe her four traumatic labours and deliveries in forensic detail. I feel physically sick by the time they have swapped birthing horror storiesan hoursodding later!
‘Teas, coffees, alcoholic beverages?’ asks one of the flight attendants. She has scraped her hair back into a super tight bun and can barely move her face. Her mouth is stretched into a permanent smile.
‘Two double vodka and Cokes,’ booms the baby’s mother. ‘And can you warm a bottle up for the baby, please? In fact, best warm up a few bottles.’
‘And make that three vodkas,’ agrees the woman by the window. We watch the attendant pour out the drinks and the baby’s mother passes two of the vodkas along to me. I pass them to the woman with the internal scarring that will never heal, the permanently damaged labia and the torn vulva that her husband says he can’t bear to look at as it’s too harrowing.
‘Thanks, love,’ says the baby’s mother. ‘Keep it. That one’s for you. You look like you need it.’
‘I’m not really much of a drinker,’ I say to their obvious horror.
She stares at me as though I’ve asked her for directions to Cancun central library. ‘Then why are you going all the way to Turkey, if not to get pissed?’
‘For work,’ I say, shifting in my seat. ‘At LoveIt Holidays head office.’
‘Ooh, very fancy.’ She raises her plastic cup, and we do a cheer. ‘Here’s to sun, sea, sex and working at head office, then.’
‘What do they drink in Turkey?’ I ask to be polite.
‘Raki,’ my neighbour says. ‘It’s lethal and you’ll regret every decision you ever make.’ She laughs heartily. ‘And too much will make you temporarily blind, but you’ve got to drink it or they’ll think you’re disrespectful.’
‘It’s true. That’s how this one got here,’ agrees the lady to my left, pointing to her unusually large and hairy baby. ‘In fact, I’m going back to Marmaris to see if I can find the waiter responsible.’
