We've all been there - the long haul flight from hell. Here's something I wrote after a particularly bad flight from London to Bangkok.

I mean what is it?

I remember flying to SF some years ago on business and had the headphones on, listening in to some terrible transatlantic movie because I was too pissed to read any longer and didn't want to talk to the sweet little old lady next to me and have her show me the photogrpahs of her grandchildren for the fifth time I mean what is it about sweet little old ladies and aeroplanes? You can feel their radioactive penetrating beam a mile off while they stare at you unflinchingly and unceasingly and in desperation you even reach for the inflight magazine hoping that this glossy brochure of unspeakable and totally mind numbing inaneness might divert super-intense ninja grandma from her intended mission to unfold her entire family and medical history upon you while you sit there trapped, unable to move. I mean why don't we just tell them to fuck off? Go on you stupid, boring, dried out old geriatric git of a grandma why don't you just take some of that suitcase full of pills that seem to be necssary to prolong a no-longer necessary life and fall asleep so that this living hell which is just about as bad as it possibly can be, can be made any worse by your incessant droning on about your lumbago or athritis - hell you're so old that you probably don't even have haemorroids any more - then at least we'd have something in common we could talk about.

But oh no, the old bag seems to have as about every intention of dropping dead as she does falling asleep and the trouble is she's spotted you not reading the inflight magazine with articles about wombat droppings and their use in skin care or the 35 essential things the traveller should know about basket weaving in Papua New Guinea.

But you can't tell her to fuck off can you. Why? Because we all had a sweet old granny and if you gave her the slightes but of trouble the air hostesses (well even the men seem to be more female than male these days) will make sure that if you get any food it will be the one that you didn't choose even if it is roast beef and you're a vegetarian.

So you endure, and the only way to endure is by ordering bottle after bottle of really crappy wine, because the lager isn't cold and the beer is, but these days they've got really strict on letting people get drunk on planes so they try and avoid the desperate repeating ping pings for attendant service knowing that they might have someone on their hands that will get unreasonably drunk and tip the plane over or something.

Heaven forfend that they should put little old ladies into solitary, or stop jonny snotty from eating five yorkie bars in a row and projectile vomiting over the head of the person infront of him that is trapped talking to a sweet little old lady armed with photographs.

Oh no, stop the only thing that distracted one from the impending horror of travelling thousands of miles without stopping, sharing a room full of hundreds of drunks that had the sense too smuggle in vodka disguised as Evian, or morons dressed in shell suits and those weirdos that actually do all those inflight excecises with a smug 'see? I'm an experienced traveller I won't get Deep Vain Thrombosis because for the first time in my fat, worthless life I'm finally doing some fucking excercise. And they're always Americans.

I've never understood the Americans. Meet just one American, any American and you've met the nicest, most polite, generous, enthusiastically interested and howdy-doodly folksy sort of person that you're ever likely to meet on the planet. Even when they're from New York. And look what they've done collectively to the world. When does it flipfrom one to the other? I mean how? The answer may lie in DVT as practised by waddling fat americans on long haul flights. Most Americans will rather foreswear the constitution, declare themselves to be communists and forego credit cards than walk anywhere when they can drive a car. But many Americans will alsoe spend billions each year on flash looking gear, pulse monitors, treadmills - I mean what the hell? in order to get the same damn excercise that they would get if they just parlked their car a few blocks shirt of their destination and walked there and back. And save on parking finds to boot.

There is no fatter nation on earth, apart from the Samoans, other than the Americans. And its never their fault of course. A recent revelation that coffin makers now had to cater for steel reinfroced concrete coffins 54 inches in girth has surprised even vintage coffing maker Jack Shrewd Interrer

'I'm not dumb,' he said. 'five years ago I saw this all coming and I've mad a fortune with my exclusive extra-wide coffins. I retooled all my machines at great expense to cater for the extr wdth which I never thought would exceed 45 inches, but I was wrong.'

Apparently it's now 53 inches.

And have you ever noticed how insistent these lard arses are when they order seventeen plates of food that they must, absolutely must have diet this or diet that soft drink and the full calorie stuff just will not do while they jam their fat gobs with as much food as their shovel fat hands can in one second possibly manage? Others, without provocation or inquiry will often furnish the information voluntarily it's my hormones you know. Or it's hereditary. What? Who gives a fuck about your hormones you fat fucking bastard. Stop eating as much, get excercise, burn up more than you take in - I mean why aren't there fat people in countries where there isn't any food, or they eat sensibly and excercise as a way of life? Don't they have hormones or genes for fucks sake? Or is it that these confessional lardpots are too fucking lazy to shop and eat sensibly and take an even modest amount of excercise?

MY doctor tells me I drink too much and take too many drugs. Fine, I accept that and carry on drinking and taking drugs anyway. Buit I don't blame my moderately high blood pressure on hormones and bloody hereditary even though I could, we have a family history of strokes and heart attacks. And alchoholism, I'm Welsh after all, but I'm not going to go around blaming the state of my body on the booze or marijauna, it's my fucking fault and I have to take responsibility for it. And since most of the people in th US and Britain are now clinically obese, I've just realised that this has to be up there as one of the longest suicide notes in publishing history.

Back on the plane sweet little old lady has finally fallen asleep, probably because of the vallium I slipped into something that was parading as a cup of tea with UHT milk while she was sifting thru 'photographs of my grandchildren, volume 8, january to february 1999'

I had also managed to nab several bottles of 'it's this or nothing you posh bastard merlot' from some smug french vinyard that had succesfully offloaded its worst year ever and still managed to call it vintage even though it was really poor quality Sarsons chip vineger, but it would do the job and as every weary traveller in my position knows, it would do the business and knock me out eventually. If only I'd had the presence of mind to take the vallium that I'd slipped ninja photgraph grandma from hell.

So there I was, sitting with the headphones in place watching a matchstick box size showing of Star Wars 58 or something in super digital wide screen surround sound (available only on certain theatres and you can bet your bottom dollar only in tinny screeching mono on the long haul passing breifly thru hell flight) and super extra widescreen cinematoscopic supa-dupa panoramic wide angled futurescope production with subtitles in Welsh. All I could see was a thin line of white and hear a garbled melange of sounds of exotic aliens either light sabering each other to death or shagging each other into a frenzy of inter-species bliss. No doubt in the cause of some empire or other. Even in my nearly vinegar drunk misery there was that sound I mentioned earlier. Finally, unable to stand another moment of this pain, yes pain that was eating into my white lined film on a matchbox half plastered with Johnnys spew from behind and mangled with various empire related patriotism and interspecies sexual fulfillment all corroborated by unfathomable Welsh subtitles I realised that I needed the bog, and soon. I ripped off the headphones and it just got worse.

There, five aisles across and fifty three seat up was the American accent totally unaware of the physical pains she was inflicting upon the rest of, well, okay it seemed to be only me. Chastened, and suprresing my desire to garotte her with my penis, I made the way past DVT entuhusiats with their stupid smug 'look at me' smug smiles and joined the inevitablke queue for the bog.

Now why is there always a queue? I appear to be the only person on board determined to drink themselves into oblivion, everyone else is doing their DVT excecises, drinking bloody diet coke and terrorising their chained neighbours with the full extent of their stupid lives, even I've done this when I've had enough crap merlot.

But I'm convinced that some people visit the lavatory on a plane just for something to do. And why do they take so long, I mean a loo on an aeroplane has to be the most squashed, terrible place,aside from SOG on the entire plane. Who wants to spend that much time in there, I mean what can they possibly be doing? Reading Proust? Struggling with a particularly nasty Klingon that stubbornly refuses to reveal himself? I'm convinced that at the first hint of a futrure toilet requirement people go there just in case. Like people that queue for the sales. And when they get there, guess what, they aren't quite ready are they? Still it's a bit of a break isn't it, and there's not much else to do until it decides to announce itself, can't hurry nature and all that, while the rest of us hop bitterly from one toe to another or are bug eyed with a sudden urgent arrival of Montezumas revenge (why is the food trolley always in the in the way when this happens?) while some methodical prat is in there timing with a small considered chuckle to see how long it takes for his recalitrant bladder to wake up this time and deliver the three drops of urine he so desperately needs to expel rather than spend an extra minute with his wife or children in trapped,closed proximity.

Now I'm a clever bastard even though my educational record contradicts that statement and experienced at nabbing the best seats on an aircraft. Now I should explain here that there's little difference between the seats, but when you're in hell these little differences become important to you simply because as you writhe in eternal torment you get a grim satisfaction of knowing that there is someone out there that is even slightly more uncomfortable than you are. Hah!

So I always nab the centre aisle seats the one nearest the corridoor. Why? Well, it's because only one person has to get up and go to the bog in the middle of compulsory sleeptime - and whats the deal with that? At some unspecified time they turn down the lights, the attendants retire to play cards, shag or whatever it is they do when they disappear perhaps they just knit life jackets or something, but woe betide you if you ask for another bottle of fucking wine. I mean, I haven't been told to go to sleep since my last relationship but suddenly you get this thin blanket and matron leaves you in no doubt that if you don't sleep you'll be arrested for being drunk or a terrorist or both. Sorry, I've got ahead of myself here. Back to the cunning strategy of seat selection. If you sit in the three seater by the window you have to disturb two people to get out. In the middle you have to disturb one but risk being disturbed by one other, the bastard that got the window and won't share it with anyone else. Similarly the one on the outside gets bog-bothered at least twice. But on the outside of the four seater you only get disturbed by one person, even if it is an incontinent granny (look I didn't say the strategy was perfect) and you don't have to guiltily wake up the person next to you with a cough, then a nudge and then a big smack across their stupid snoring heads just because you slipped them some valium to stop them talking to you.

Nope, aisle seat in the middle is always the best option. Unless of course you have a fat diabetic behind you. Now I should explain this. It's only happened once, but I was on the way to BK and the plane had almost filled, I had my aisle seat, was pleasantly stiffed and against all experience told myself with misplaced optimism that perhaps this flight would be different, that I might actually not visit hell itself but merely a severe purgatory. I'm sure someone upstairs plans these little things, yes God I'm looking at you, because sure enough, a minute before take off this...this...I want to say woman but that would be unfair on 50% of the human population, but this..this...nightmare is bursting down the aisle being pushed forward by five flight attendants as she struggled to squeeze between the seats. I mean, she....she...she was dressed in this florid hippyish garb (garbage would be more apt) was bedecked with any manner of cheap jewellry, had pierced nostrils, ears and god only help us what else, and make-up that looked like it had been applied with a paintballing gun at close range - and had missed badly. Her lips were three inches to the left of her mouth and the mascara that should have been over her left eye was hovering three inches in the air.

She huffed and puffed her way towards my seat, oh no, what fresh hell is this?, and then, yes, tried to occupy the seat behind me. She literally had to be prised in, she was so damned fat it took a good five minutes to squeeze her five person girth into a one person seat. My own seat was pushed forwards at an acute angle, and when I turned in dismay, she hissed,

'It's not my fault, I'm a diabetic.'

What the fuck? What do I bloody well care you fat, obese cow? She wasn't just obese, she was defiantly obese. And blaming it on something else. As far as I kow being fat can cause dia-fucking-betes but diabetes can't make you fat. There was worse to come of course. Being so fucking fat she insisted on having 8, count them, air conditioning tubes pointing right at her at full blast while the rest of us froze just so that she could stop sweating from the exertion of simply being alive. And when the food came? Did she just nibble a soggy croissant as proof that her ailment was the product of her medical history? Did she buggery bollocks, she asked for and got at least five trays of muck, I could hear her slushy gob masticating which at least had the effect of putting me off my own swill, listen you grab small mercies where you can on long haul flights, no questions asked. Now I have a question to ask here. In the event of please God please there being a crash so the hell is at least terminated, what if by some sorry mishap we were to survive and have to take off our shoes or whatever and slide down the chute and blow those stupid fucking whistles. How the hell would anyone get past her? Seriously now, it took a full five minutes to prise her into the seat, it would take a plank of wood a mile long to get her out. Archimedes once said give me a lever big enough and I could move the earth, he hadn't reckoned with the fat badly painted diabetic.

In all seriousness she was a clear hazard to other passengers, I remain convinced that obese people should not be allowed to fly. Think of the extra aviation fuel, think of the environment! And of course this fat diabetic had to go to the bog at least five times a minute so my clever seat theory was completely buggered. I read somehwere that an obese woman had used the aircraft bog and had flushed the loo while still seated. She'd formed a complete occlusion and had her insides sucked out, prolapsing her bowels.

Marvellous story that.

I fantasised this happening to the fat diabetic only this time her entire turned inside out body would be sucked out and fall into the sea. Then again that would probably have caused a tsunami and to be honest I have nothing particular against folk that choose to live next to the coast. But give me enough time and I'm sure I can think of some reason to despise them. The memory of that..that...thing still haunts me to this day. I mean what was her purpose in living? She was just an all consuming, unapologetic, selfish, self-centered feeding tube who wore her self-inflicted diabetes as a badge of pride.

Brrrr.

Perhaps in hindsight I'm being a tad harsh.

At the end of the flight, the pilot of course, oblivious to anything other than the odd hijacking attempt announces in that annoying, modulated supposedly soothing voice that he'd like to thank us for flying with him and his fucking bollocks airline and how he's been priviliged to be our captain. When was the last time you saw one of these bastards walk down the aisle and ask if the food was okay?, or arrest intimidating sweet old women and fat diabetics and queue for the bog like everyone else so they'd fucking know what it was like for the rest of us. Even if it did mean flying straight into a mountain.

And of course, having landed, everyone absolutely has to be the first one off and race to the luggage carousel where they then wait for four hours while the baggage carriers loot your luggage and nick your camera. And then they stand so close to the carousel that even when you spot your split bags you have to elbow them aside to get at them while they look at you with stupid cow surprise that you might want to retrieve whats left of your property.

Long haul flights? Forget them, but I must dash, got to get to the airport.

yechydda,

Â