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Dreadful Nonsense

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

I don't know if I've mentioned this before - there may be one or two of you out there that need this kind of thing clearing up once and for all - but I really don't like flying. I don't understand it and I don't approve of it and if there is any other option at all, I'll avoid doing it. Really, I will. If I was a bird, I'd be a penguin.

Unfortunately, I was born on an island, and now I live on another island. Ideally, I should live in the middle of a massive land mass, and other people would come and visit me there, and if I needed to go anywhere I could walk, or possibly cycle, but this isn't happening no matter how often I ask, and because I don't have the patience to take the ferry, I do occasionally have no choice but to get on a plane and fly.

Something I've noticed recently - in the last three years or so - is the fact that I'm starting to hate flying just that tiny, but very significant, bit less.

This first started about 6 months after I started properly "dating" He Who Only... back in the golden days when we both lived on different islands and had to travel long and romantic distances in order to kiss each other and hold hands and irritate everyone around us. I was taking so many flights every month that they were starting to become quite routine, and dare I say it, even slightly boring. No less terrifying each time, I must add, but the terror was being slightly infringed by a more pressing feeling of mundanity. Can the mundane also be terrifying? Possibly. But it really does take the edge off it.

I noticed, as I whipped out my camera on the flight yesterday as we began our rapid descent towards Heathrow, that I had actually begun to enjoy myself.




The pictures, you really don't need to tell me, are quite rubbish, but it's what they signify that is important. My usual routine on a flight, He Who Only... will testify, is to cry for at least the first ten minutes, then descend into some kind of valium-induced stupor that leaves me unable to do anything but listen to the same song on repeat on my CD player/MP3 player and then eventually start getting antsy and restless that we haven't landed yet.

This flight, I had started by FALLING ASLEEP BEFORE TAKE OFF AND ACTUALLY SLEEPING THROUGH TAKE OFF, something Little Sister Edel had once told me she'd done and I didn't believe her because I thought it wasn't actually possible, and I finished it by taking photographs of the landing, photographs that involved actually looking out the window while the plane is still in the air and also not weeping, rocking, or praying.



Very soon, we go to Germany on holiday, and I'm actually, really, honestly looking forward to the flight.

This entry was posted on 27 March 2007 at 5:08 pm. 0 comments

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