Hello Belgium
Airline travel always brings out the worst in me. My otherwise sunny disposition is magically transformed into a misery-laden embodiment of impatience, loathing and hate by the ridiculous process of getting on a plane and going somewhere else. I was wakened this morning from a perfectly good sleep by my crappy alarm clock, reinforced by knowledge that I had to go to the airport and catch a plane to Brussels. (Not direct to Brussels, of course, but connecting through Chicago; direct flights only happen to other people, most notably people departing from a city other than St.Louis.)
At 10:45am the driver arrived to pick me up. I couldn’t help noticing that his vehicle looked like someone exploded a can of soda in the back. Plus the speedometer read zero for the whole trip. I wondered if it was broken or if he just disconnected it to keep the odometer reading low.
Half an hour later I began the process of engagement with the harridan at the American Airlines check-in desk. In spite of the services of the expensive business travel agent that my company employs, coupled with my high status on the airline, they fucked up my reservation again and now wanted $200 more from me to put it right. Arguing with airline personnel is like juggling dog shit – it’s utterly pointless. In fact you’d probably get more sense out of the dog shit. Still, after only thirty minutes wasted it was finally time to go through security. I joined a line filled with cretins who had never heard about taking off their shoes or putting liquids in little plastic baggies. Have you ever noticed how fat TSA screeners are? Yes I have my boarding pass out for your inspection you corpulent, thick fuck…
At 12:10pm boarding commenced for the first leg of my journey, to Chicago. I decided to pass the time reading the entertaining in-flight magazine. By 12:12pm I had now read all the entertaining parts of the in-flight magazine, including the Mensa quiz section, which of course I could not be bothered to complete. And we were still at the gate. Mensa intelligence levels don’t mean anything when you’re trying to get an airline employee with the IQ of a wasp, and a personality to match, to check the status of your upgrade.
Ninety minutes later we arrived in Chicago. Outside the land was covered in snow and all the fields were wearing a beautiful winter covering. Inside the heating was turned up too high and the concourse was littered with idiots dragging roller bags. I resisted the temptation to shoulder-charge the third person to suddenly stop walking in front of me so that they could gaze around with a vacant expression. It was close though. The two hours to my next flight were passed in a haze of over-priced airport pizza and wireless internet. I still had no news of my upgrade – apparently business class had checked in full so I boarded the flight and took my seat. Exit row aisle, no-one next to me. It really doesn’t get much better than that, which is overwhelmingly sad. Just prior to take-off a cheerful flight attendant came and gave me my upgraded seat. Two people missed the flight. Someone’s loss is my gain.
Up in business class I should have been sleeping but I decided to watch a movie and eat the in-flight meal. This is because I am pathologically incapable of turning down free food. (By the way, the movie “3:10 To Yuma” is absolute fucking shite.) Eventually I reclined the seat to its near-flat position and attempted to sleep. Unfortunately “near-flat” is not the same thing as “flat” and the seat sloped downwards so that I slid down it while I lay there. After an hour or two of sliding and rolling over I managed to get my underwear so comprehensively rolled up around my bollocks that I was forced to reach in and manually readjust mid-flight. I thought the flight attendant might offer to help – this was business class, after all. Still, at least she was friendly. In fact all of them were friendly, a first for me on international flights on American, perhaps a result of all the regular international flight attendants being booked on their annual refresher course with Satan. I celebrated by eating all the left over business class luxury chocolate assortment in the galley while waiting for the toilet to become vacant.
Eventually we arrived in Brussels, where it was still dark. Before landing we were served an omelette that appeared to have several servings of male DNA inside and a cup of tea that tasted as though it had been used as bathwater by a family of sewer rodents. The rest of the day was productive but uneventful, with the exception of having to fight a deep desire to fall asleep around 2pm this afternoon (7am back home), a feat that was only achieved by drinking diet coke and having an argument with someone. I’m now back in my hotel where the walls are so thin that I swear I can hear the Belgian bloke in the next room scratching his arse. I am experiencing the deep joy that is business travel – the miniscule pleasure of having a pleasantly attractive front desk girl deliver my wireless password to my room, followed by the almost irresistible urge to walk downstairs and kill with my bare hands the noisy gits standing outside the hotel laughing at inane Belgian jokes. At times like this I realize that I’m not alone. There must be thousands of pissed-off airline travelers and tired, irritable hotel denizens who are just one more problem away from snapping and beating the piss out of some stupid bastard who so desperately deserves it. It’s only a miracle it doesn’t happen every day. On that cheerful note I’m going to get some sleep, provided that the Belgian bloke next door can lay off scratching his arse for five minutes…
Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison
At 10:45am the driver arrived to pick me up. I couldn’t help noticing that his vehicle looked like someone exploded a can of soda in the back. Plus the speedometer read zero for the whole trip. I wondered if it was broken or if he just disconnected it to keep the odometer reading low.
Half an hour later I began the process of engagement with the harridan at the American Airlines check-in desk. In spite of the services of the expensive business travel agent that my company employs, coupled with my high status on the airline, they fucked up my reservation again and now wanted $200 more from me to put it right. Arguing with airline personnel is like juggling dog shit – it’s utterly pointless. In fact you’d probably get more sense out of the dog shit. Still, after only thirty minutes wasted it was finally time to go through security. I joined a line filled with cretins who had never heard about taking off their shoes or putting liquids in little plastic baggies. Have you ever noticed how fat TSA screeners are? Yes I have my boarding pass out for your inspection you corpulent, thick fuck…
At 12:10pm boarding commenced for the first leg of my journey, to Chicago. I decided to pass the time reading the entertaining in-flight magazine. By 12:12pm I had now read all the entertaining parts of the in-flight magazine, including the Mensa quiz section, which of course I could not be bothered to complete. And we were still at the gate. Mensa intelligence levels don’t mean anything when you’re trying to get an airline employee with the IQ of a wasp, and a personality to match, to check the status of your upgrade.
Ninety minutes later we arrived in Chicago. Outside the land was covered in snow and all the fields were wearing a beautiful winter covering. Inside the heating was turned up too high and the concourse was littered with idiots dragging roller bags. I resisted the temptation to shoulder-charge the third person to suddenly stop walking in front of me so that they could gaze around with a vacant expression. It was close though. The two hours to my next flight were passed in a haze of over-priced airport pizza and wireless internet. I still had no news of my upgrade – apparently business class had checked in full so I boarded the flight and took my seat. Exit row aisle, no-one next to me. It really doesn’t get much better than that, which is overwhelmingly sad. Just prior to take-off a cheerful flight attendant came and gave me my upgraded seat. Two people missed the flight. Someone’s loss is my gain.
Up in business class I should have been sleeping but I decided to watch a movie and eat the in-flight meal. This is because I am pathologically incapable of turning down free food. (By the way, the movie “3:10 To Yuma” is absolute fucking shite.) Eventually I reclined the seat to its near-flat position and attempted to sleep. Unfortunately “near-flat” is not the same thing as “flat” and the seat sloped downwards so that I slid down it while I lay there. After an hour or two of sliding and rolling over I managed to get my underwear so comprehensively rolled up around my bollocks that I was forced to reach in and manually readjust mid-flight. I thought the flight attendant might offer to help – this was business class, after all. Still, at least she was friendly. In fact all of them were friendly, a first for me on international flights on American, perhaps a result of all the regular international flight attendants being booked on their annual refresher course with Satan. I celebrated by eating all the left over business class luxury chocolate assortment in the galley while waiting for the toilet to become vacant.
Eventually we arrived in Brussels, where it was still dark. Before landing we were served an omelette that appeared to have several servings of male DNA inside and a cup of tea that tasted as though it had been used as bathwater by a family of sewer rodents. The rest of the day was productive but uneventful, with the exception of having to fight a deep desire to fall asleep around 2pm this afternoon (7am back home), a feat that was only achieved by drinking diet coke and having an argument with someone. I’m now back in my hotel where the walls are so thin that I swear I can hear the Belgian bloke in the next room scratching his arse. I am experiencing the deep joy that is business travel – the miniscule pleasure of having a pleasantly attractive front desk girl deliver my wireless password to my room, followed by the almost irresistible urge to walk downstairs and kill with my bare hands the noisy gits standing outside the hotel laughing at inane Belgian jokes. At times like this I realize that I’m not alone. There must be thousands of pissed-off airline travelers and tired, irritable hotel denizens who are just one more problem away from snapping and beating the piss out of some stupid bastard who so desperately deserves it. It’s only a miracle it doesn’t happen every day. On that cheerful note I’m going to get some sleep, provided that the Belgian bloke next door can lay off scratching his arse for five minutes…
Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison
posted by Mr Bison at
2:08 PM
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