HUMAN OBSERVATIONS

There is something about my return flight after every work trip away that really annoys the hell out of me. Simply put, It's the other passengers. I've never liked crowds and I really don't like being squashed into cattle class with a version of a crowd i.e: the other passengers.

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Take last nights flight for example.

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First up I'm sitting in the waiting lounge at Newman Airport, iPod on, head in a book. I look up and scan the room. I lock eyes with a fairly attractive blonde girl who actually works in one of the camps I stay at up there. That's a bit embarrassing but I quickly scan on and find myself looking straight at a guy who has his index finger up his nose attempting to retrieve a bit of dried snot. He then examines the snot before wiping the snotty finger onto his trouser leg. He seems somewhat oblivious of the other 60 people surrounding him, most of them are watching the TV anyway.

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Then a guy storms through the area and slams himself down in the chair directly behind me which jars me forward. I adjust my posture, turn the volume up and keep on reading. Time to board, thank christ.

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I always try and get allocated an emergency exit seat for the extra leg room and last night was no exception. I was one of the first on so I had to wait awhile to find out who was sitting next to me...you see, the type of people who ask for emergency exit seats are me, anyone over 120kg in weight and everyone over 6 foot tall. Yep the 7 foot tall guy heads straight for me and that seat. And oh goody, he's the nose pickin guy too ewwwww. Now I have to spend the entire flight leaning into the aisle because his huge arms are flapping everywhere and because I can't remember if he wiped the booger on his left leg or his right one.

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Problem with the aisle leaning, apart from the sore neck and back, is the sore head and shoulder, caused mostly by them being whacked on a regular basis by either the flight attendants, the food trolley, the drinks trolley or the constant stream of large male passengers who really should get their prostates checked, I mean who takes a piss 3 times in 2 hours.

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Then I met the staring guy. I was all iPoded up and reading away when I felt like someone was watching me and sure enough, 3 rows up is a wide eyed young guy who has turned a full 90 degrees in his seat and is staring at me and anyone else behind him. It's not a casual bored stare either because even after I locked eyes with him, which usually results in the other person looking away (see above blonde girl moment), he still kept staring at me. It wasn't a threatening stare, it was one of those, I don't see why my staring at you should be an issue kind of stares. Back to the book, surely we can land soon.

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But no, first we have to be fed and watered. The food, if you can call it that, on these flights is less than edible so I never accept it when offered. I know that every time I refuse it the flight attendant nods silently to herself. She like me knows it's crap, to her this puts me in another class of passenger, she knows that I am wise to the evil contents of those foil containers...............or does she? I've had looks from some of them that could kill when I shake my head no, I'm sure they're thinking "if I've got to heat this crap up and drag this trolley down the aisle then surely it isn't asking too much of you to bloody well eat it is it?" Well yes it is actually.

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So I usually keep the iPod headphones on and just mouth a "no thank you" to them, but last night that wasn't good enough. It seems that my flight attendant somehow figured that the reason I didn't want any food was because I had headphones on and probably didn't understand her when she asked me if I wanted some dinner. So what does she do......she actually yells the question at me thinking I might hear her over the music this time, I swear that if I hadn't taken my headphones off and spoken the words "no thank you" that she would have removed them herself and asked me a third time. Trust me even with the head phones on and the book open I am capable of discerning just what the hell you're intentions are when you pull up alongside me with a trolley full of food. I didn't at any stage during our interaction think you were trying to sell me life insurance....honest.

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Then there's the landing followed immediately by the mad rush to stand up in the aisle and then grumble about how long it's taking to get the door open because now you're squashed and it sort of hurts and you can't move much. Well if you just stayed in your god damn seat a bit longer you could have waited for the door to be opened in comfort. What's the bloody rush, you know we're all going to wait another 20 minutes for our bags to be thrown upside down onto the luggage belt anyway. I had to join them last night simply to avoid being crushed to death by a huge gangly 7 foot nose excavator, who looked like he would explode if he wasn't off the plane within seconds of landing.

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So yeah it's great to be home again, it's just a small version of Dante's hell getting here.