Flight Risk

I'm off on a trip Stateside soon, and I should be looking forward to it. I mean - it's going to be great All that good grub and daft sports, big trucks and lousy drivers. The place is a great crack - one big cartoon where everyone seems to have stepped out of a TV comedy.

But there's one thing that always gets in the way with holidays is the flight.

I don't care how many ads that British Airways run that makes flying look like the ultimate in cool dudery. I don't care that these Far Eastern stewardesses give free blowjobs in first class, or that on Virgin Atlantic you have so much video on demand you won't want to get off at the other end.

That's not what puts me off the whole flying experience. The flight itself is just the longest most boring experience it's possible to have. You sit inside some long metal Job Centre waiting room with all the people you loathe, with the added novelty of being thousands of feet off the ground! There's nothing outside the windows, there's no room to move about, the lavs are all imported from disused British Rail carriages, and there's some shifty looking middle eastern dude next to you playing with a plastic knife...

No I'm cool with the flight part. I'm perfectly willing to get inside one of those big metal cigar cases to risk my life with the stewardesses. If they're prepared to spend half their lives in one of those things I'm man enough to sit there being waited on.

The thousands of feet up in the air at hundreds of miles an hour is all very well, but I think that it's just a made up story to keep us quiet and nervous.

Maybe they invented Star Trek style teleporting years ago (and let's face it, it's the 21st century and they were supposed to have invented stuff like this by now) and we don't actually leave the ground at all. They just play lots of spooky loud noises, shake the damn thing up a bit, and import tons of cotton wool to blog up the windows.

No wonder everyone acts like they've just swallowed a bucket of Sopadeine. They're quietly traumatized by the whole airline shtick. You just keep quiet because there's that unexpressed threat. "You lot keep quiet and stay put, because if we don't like you we can very easily send this thing hurtling to the ground!!". So we keep very quiet and hope that we don't do anything that makes the whole 747 lurch over to the side suddenly.

Nope - I don't mind any of this flight stuff.

The caper that makes me really nervous is the rigmarole between checking in and getting past the customs. What a windup! Is it just me, or is the whole customs/X-Ray machine act just way over the top. The airlines can make their stewardesses walk the aisles in string bikinis and feed me Spaghetti Carbonara by hand, but they will never get me feeling comfortable with the whole experience until they pay attention to the soul destroyers giving you the eyeball on the way to the plane.

I know one of you gentle souls reading this must actually do this for a living. And I'm sure you're the exception. The one with the smile and the "hello, how are you..." thing going on. I just feel sorry for you having to work with such maungy bastards who look at you like you are about to pepper the whole vicinity with the Uzi you somehow smuggled through the metal detector.

I mean, lighten up you buggers! I'm visiting your country with a fully packed credit card and will be spending the better part of my income in the next two weeks in your country so stop treating me like I'm Vito Corleone III, the first Invader from Mars.

And the Yanks are the worst. They'd like us to think so well of themselves as a country, and as a decent, happy welcoming people, but the first experience you have of the place is their self important security honchos who haven' t even got the decency to give you a hearty "how you doin'!" as you skulk past trying to appear the normal, friendly tourist you are. And the wait! Chicago once it was like some sci-fi version of Ellis Island! I felt genuinely privileged because I didn't get stamped APPROVED on my forehead and my name changed to Wakefield Kirkgate.

My own first experience of France was a sadistic bastard in a customs uniform who stripped me naked in a booth just because he didn't like the cut of my leather jacket. I love France, but I still expect their customs and their police to be creepy little scumbags because of this nasty little git in Dieppe refusing to treat me with any dignity.

To me if you want to become the country people love to visit you have to take a look at how the Greeks do things. "Kalimera, mate!!" I've never been so warmly welcomed by a nations officials. And the hire car dude was even better. 'What shall we do if it breaks down..." "Ah, just push it into the sea..."

A laugh a joke and a welcome. That's how to wear a uniform. The bad guys are no harder to spot for giving them a smile as you check 'em out. And us good guys might even feel even better for having dropped by. As the cliché goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Blogga