I have 2015 kilometres to go. The on board computer on the screen in front of me just told me so.
It also tells me we are over Trabzon. Yeah, I know, I think we’re lost too!
But the pilot sounds pretty confident when he comes on so I ‘m not going to up and leave in a huff.
He has just come on the PA to announce that the Wireless Internet is not working. He is ever so sorry.
I’m glad, as the first thing the airline tells you is turn your computers off for safety! They might interfere with the multi million pound equipment that Boing have spent trillions of dollars developing. And here they are screwing it all up with their own Wireless Internet. Huh I ask you?
It’s strange to think that Hamas and the like, need a guided missile to bring down a plane.
Apparently we can do it by not switching off our IPad.
I have earned some Karma points on this flight.
I got on board and fell into a nap whilst the crew (who between them can speak fourteen languages you know) continued to cram the other five thousand passengers on board.
I awoke when a very pretty stewardess nudged me awake. I was in an aisle seat. no one between me and the guy in the window seat. I had already noted this earlier and wondered if there was to be a little more room for me this flight.
Well the stewardess, you know, the pretty one, woke me to ask if I would mind giving up my seat for a family that somehow couldn’t get together. Aw shucks! what could I say but yes, ok. Up I got and moved to another seat in the middle cabin. I gave up my aisle seat with no one in the middle to move between two young Indian guys. Both about the size of Hulk Hogan. I was in the middle seat! I had been suckered by the stewardess, you know, the pretty one with no sense of decency.
The man on my left looked like a fat faced Richard Prior with huge beer belly. He smelled of Islamabad. The one on my right had a beard, two beer bellies and smelled of Mumbai.
F****** wonderful.
Still, think of the Karma points being banked.
Now, the meal. I was wondering how this was going to go. With the three of us being a little on the largish size. well, them anyway…I am the smallest.
Its the elbows. we cannot, all three of us, move elbows at the same time. I am in the middle and am constantly nudging them. first one, then the other. They nudge me but only with one arm obviously if they nudge me with the arm that’s furthest away from me I would be forced to consider it a deliberate act of aggression and defend my position.!!
Now the food itself is fine. relatively so. I would only suggest that my lamb should have been slaughtered first and that the spinach should not need a spoon.
Basically,its not what crammed onto every square millimetre of the tiny tray, so much as the packaging that it’s all in.
it is all sealed for freshness. And so it should stay fresh ‘cos you can’t open anything. Not without a f*******crowbar. Imagine, us three men. all with bunches of bananas as fingers trying to open little Gullivers people type of packaging that has been welded shut.
I don’t speak indian. they don’t appear to speak English. They don’t appear to speak to each other. So we end up sort of taking it in turns by mutual, unspoken consent.
We get rather good at it actually.
One opens a packet, lets say the bread roll, the other two watch to see how the first has found the weak point to prise it open.
He doesn’t eat the morsel of food retrieved but puts it down whilst we follow suit opening the strong polythene bags. We then go back to the first guy and he eats, then the next, then the third man.
We move on to the next ‘course’ and repeat the process.
It’s very intuitive and we cope well, getting a fluidity going. It’s basically synchronised noshing.
But its the little box of “Light Bites” that beat us. We get out of synch. It becomes a free for all as all three attempt to be the first to find a way into these separate boxes on our trays. They are like safe deposit boxes. It’s a shame we haven’t got the Brinks Mat bullion robbers on the plane to help. Well, we probably have but they are up in first class.
I shall describe the “Light Bite” container, about 8″ long 1 1/2 ” square and packed to the brim. it has a white plastic base with a clear, formed plastic cover. Around all of this is a clear cellophane wrapper adhered to the plastic base. This is sealed further with a band of clear wrapping some half inch wide going around the middle of the whole thing. This band has a handy little red tag on it that you would pull around to undo which (should) start the opening process.
Inside, temptingly glaring at you, are a packet of Jacobs Crackers (2) a small Kiri cheese spread (1), a packet of lightly salted bruschetta slices (5) tomato and piri dip (1) and a packet of tic tacs (4) .There is also a wet wipe packet, and a handy leaflet that lists the contents …(you didn’t think I was not just copying that list did you?) It also informs me of the calorific content of the lot, that the packet itself weighs 49g and, a fact to enliven my life, that there are over 7500 different varieties of tomato in the world.
This I swear is all true.
What is not told, is how to open the fucking thing.
I first grabbed the little red tag going around the outer wrapper. It split down the middle and I ended up going around the package, holding a thin strip of plastic in my hand and the whole thing still sealed. I now had nothing to hold onto. It was a bit like the sellotape roll. No end to pick on. I got my knife and fork from the tray and attacked.
I got the wrapper off, only to find every time I screwed it into ball it sprung back to full size again.
The knife and fork worked well for the man from Mumbai too. He sliced his way in same as me. Islamabad got his done with his nails, poof. We now had three sheets of wayward cellophane doing the rounds of our fold down trays. this together with the empty plastic trays and packets of the previous courses meant our three seats were looking as though they were in the middle of Sandwich Bay recycling centre! It was chaos.
At one point we all laughed at the ridiculousness of it.
But now, our game faces were on. Having opened the main packet we had to crack the individual items!
I admit, I gave up on the Jacobs Crackers. I could not open the packet at all. I did manage the cheese spread, and, eventually, the bruschetta slices, but the crackers……nah! I was forced to ask a stewardess to use her scarlet nails to open them. Seeing how easy it was for her, Mr Mumbai did the same.
She gave us a funny look.
Although Mr Islamabad had some nails, he couldn’t crack the Jacobs. He was too proud to ask the stewardess, even though she silently offered. But no, he insisted on trying himself. Stubborn though he was he finally gave up minutes later with a mumble of words as he flung the packet on the floor in frustration.
I do not speak Hindi, Urdu, Pashmiri or whatever it was he used. But i know “fuck this for a game of soldiers ” when I hear it.
Come on Emirates……look at this packaging.
Oh, as an added part to this, on the main tray comes a round tub of water. It has a foil top to it. When you peel back the foil you can get a fine jet of water slash out ….straight at the guy sitting to your right.
I did this at lunch and immediately apologised as he got the full squirt.
He was fine.
Less so when when we had afternoon drinks And I did it again!!
Well, I will stop here as we have arrived at Dubai. Time has flown writing this. I didn’t realise it was so long!
I nod a farewell to the two Sumo wrestlers and silently pray never to see them again let alone sit between them.