I.A.M. Musing About…

You see, in theory (these things always seem better when expressed in a theoretical framework, don’t they?), we took off about 25 minutes ago. Or possibly that was the point that we were to have had the umbilical cord / walk-way / bridge of death thing disengage, severing our last connection with the rational understanding that man is not a beast capable of flight.

I’m not afraid of flying. I’ve not the vast experience nor financial acumen required to even be aware of possessing the phobia. Perhaps my simple lack of exposure to the wonder that is modern æroplane travel means that my approach to its experience permits a view of un-jaundiced clarity. The approaching of the impending experience of leaving the ground for far longer than normally experienced by human is therefore all the more fearfully considered. The aluminium tube about to be filled with a cross-section of humanity (a touch above 200 on an Airbus A330-300, apparently) will be in the air for the next ten hours or so, in a continuous flaunting of the laws of gravity, based solely on the principle of a greater air pressure under a wing forcing the aircraft upwards, and the air passing over the upper curved surface of the wing taking so long to traverse the seemingly identical distance that there is little to prevent the 87,000 tonne craft from literally flying into the sky.

Which, frankly, defies my comprehension. And always has.

So, when the Pilot announces that they’re delaying our boarding the plane because they’re concerned that the condition of one of the engines is not quite tip-top, so – after they bring it up to full blast and then back down to zero again to ‘see what happens’ – they may switch to another plane because of insufficient faith in the present one because “your safe journey is our primary concern”… well, this little bunny starts breathing a bit more rapidly…

Meanwhile there’s the shifting from one gate to another to be closer to where the new – and presumably more mechanically sound – plane will be taxiing to… eventually…

And I amuse myself by discovering how annoying the location of the right [shift] button is on this keyboard… One never noticed it, but the left [shift] button could be reduced to the size of a pin-head and it would make no difference to me. But move the other one to the right by one spot and reduce its size by 50% so it’s the same as any other one and… Martha! Get the boy a blanket and a cup of tea, he’s having a fit!

Even typing about it doesn’t remind me it has moved. Bugger.

Plus, suddenly I’ve become one of those people scurrying about in a hunched angle around public areas scrambling for un-attended electrical outlets too plug into, and then scanning for Free Wi-Fi networks.

And there’s the pre-boarding call for Business Class. 21:04… ought to be fun…

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 9:05 pm and is filed under BLOG-O-RAMA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.