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Dreadful Nonsense

"I've read your blog. it's really funny. you should write a column." - Jon Ronson

This flying thing really has it’s ups and downs, dunnit? And I don’t just mean the take offs and landings, or the turbulence, or even the prescription drugs I take to get through it all - I mean, the weird relationship I’m building up with flying seems to have taken a tumble for the worse, and I’m not sure what went wrong, whose fault it was, and how it can be fixed.

See, yesterday afternoon I was all chipper with flying. I thought me and flying were getting on well. I was planning to meet flying’s parents, in a manner of speaking, and flying had already met my friends and garnered rave reviews. Me and flying, in short, were hand in hand and the world was our oyster.

But then, flying took a mood. Flying decided that I was getting too comfortable with our relationship, and I think wanted to test my loyalty. Flying therefore threw me a curveball - ice on the runway.

Ice. On the runway. Ice. As if taking off and landing isn’t dangerous and foolhardy enough, flying decided that skidding to and from airports would be fun to try. I’ve flown a great deal recently, a lot of it through some quite inclement weatherings, and hadn’t really given any of it any thought, because I’m more concerned with the mechanics of the plane, scoping out any possible terrorists that might be lurking, and occasionally wondering if the pilot was going through a difficult time and planning to plant the plane nose deep in the side of a mountain. Weather I didn’t give two hoots about. Until yesterday.

I heard about this Ice and Runway interface thanks to a particularly unpleasant check in girl in Dublin Airport. She imparted these words of wisdom while staring at my right ear. “Your flight’s been delayed. Do you want to get an earlier one? Leaves in half an hour.” All delivered staring to the side of my face. I moved position so that she wouldn’t have to change her gaze, but would be able to meet mine, but she persisted in questioning my ear. My ear replied that an earlier flight would be fine. “There’s ice on the runway, you see, they don’t want many planes taking off or landing.” My ear wasn’t immediately thrilled to hear the news. “I wish you hadn’t said that,” I mumbled, as she asked my ear if it had packed the bags itself or been given anything to carry on by a stranger.

In the event, of course, everything was fine, dandy, rosy and more or less on the button. Bit of ice on the runway never hurt anyone.

This entry was posted on 25 February 2005 at 7:33 pm. 0 comments

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