Day 43: I Hate Flying

Don't get me wrong. I like flying FOR WORK. Flying FOR WORK involved:

First class travel to New York. "Champagne, madam?" Yes please. I will mix it with this cheeky Temazepam I just happen to have, and find this film hilarious, and pass out, and wake up in a limousine going over Brooklyn Bridge. What is this in the minibar? That's HILARIOUS. Hoo hoo. Hee hee. What am I doing today? What's that? Eating organic tomatoes with a Son Of Mars and trying to find a VISION for organic pasta spirally things? You pay me for this? Paramount and Royalton when they were interesting? Yes please. Oh dear, I seem to be drunk again. But it's OK, because there's another limousine taking me back to JFK. "Champagne, madam?" Yes please, it goes lovely with Valium. And look, there's a man with a board with my NAME on. Ha ha ha!

Short haul business class flights to various European capitals. Oh look there's that funny man in the Mercedes here to drive me to Heathrow and look, here I am in the BA lounge! Ha ha! I shall drink 10 tiny glasses of orange juice, get someone to send a fax for me, read the paper ostentatiously, and go through the 'I'm important' channel at customs. And look, there's another man at Charles de Gaulle with a board with my name on! Dinner in the Louvre? Yeah, OK. Stranded in Paris during a strike? Forced to stay at hotels full of women wearing buttermilk leather miniskirts and men with matching skin? Why not. Go on. Twist my arm.

Business class to Edinburgh. At what point, actually, is that necessary? £480 for a 50 minute flight to go to a 2 hour meeting? Is the client paying for it? Ha ha!

If you're unemployed you fly Ryanair to La Rochelle a lot. La Rochelle airport is in fact a shed, and until a year ago they unloaded the luggage onto a little cart with trailers and would just drive it into the airport, and you plucked your scuzzy suitcase off the trailer. It had a certain charm.

Now a cavalcade of cunts who wear nylon shorts and England shirts and don't bother to speak French go there the whole time and I have to fly with them. I hate them. Their children scream and are uncontrolled, and the French people and their children are dignified and well behaved, but the English people put ON their matching England shirts and their children RUN AROUND and SHOUT, and then the flight is late, and then some twat leaves a van on the runway so you have to fly round and round in the Essex sky, and the landing is awful because it always is with Ryanair. And some woman sitting in front of you says over and over again: "Are all Ryanair planes the same?", and then she says, "are they the biggest airline?" and you want to shout HOW STUPID ACTUALLY ARE YOU? And then an announcement comes on with some Ryanair bloke offering cheap mobile calls and the bloke next to you mutters "for fuck's sake", and you both tut like the raddled old snobs you both are.

When you finally get off the plane the matching England shirted ones are all turning on their mobiles that have STUPID RINGS ON THEM and shout and go HA HA ISN'T IT CHEAP THE DRINK, and then you see Leicester City Ladies' FC all drunk at Stansted walking around going ALLEZ LES BLEUS in bad French accents, then you notice 2 of them are in wheelchairs having sustained footballing injuries at the hands of, I hope, a far superior French ladies' football team, and are slightly ashamed that you laugh a bit, then you catch yourself pulling DISTAINFUL FACES and you're BY YOURSELF. Then there's the THOUSANDS of IDIOTS getting off flights from hen and stag weekends going HA HA HA WEREN'T WE DRUNK HA HA WHERE'S YOUR BAG JOHN DID YOU LEAVE IT IN THAT BIRD'S ROOM HA HA HA.

I should turn inwards, take up meditation, and accept my fellow human beings as the beautiful individuals they all are, whilst accepting that other people have different ideas of fun, ideas that may not necessarily match my own. I would, however, be happier if they did it at some distance from me, possibly in a different, roped-off area. I don't think that's unreasonable.

Oh dear. I seem to be back in London. How did that happen?

Day 43: I Find The Samantha Fox Fan Club Alive and Well In France

So there we are at the 11ième foire aux ânes (that's 11th donkey festival, before you ask), in Haimps (pop. 434), and what do I see carefully preserved in plastic and stuck to the side of a truck belonging to a seller of melons?

This picture of The Fox. And her, er, melons.*







* Going back to Blighty tonight. Probably just as well.

Day 42: I Find A Guitarist Made Of Cognac

It's not like I think they're good, these posts. The pictures are a bit shit too, come to think of it. Problem is, fuck-all's happening, except me spending a rainy afternoon learning to read the tarot and discovering that I am, in all probability, deeply psychic and may well have mind-reading powers. Strong probability of a hint of the Romany, at least, which may describe my deep attraction to David Essex, who I always imagine sitting cross-legged on the back of a painted gypsy caravan with a horse called Buster, singing "Hold me close, don't let me go (oh no)".

Still, there's a Donkey Festival tomorrow morning, so things are looking up. In the meantime - and to complement the Tree of Bread (see below), here is, as promised, the Guitarist Made of Cognac.

Day 42: I Find A Tree Made Of Bread

Look at that. Good, isn't it. Organic, about 18 inches high, and from a village called Breville, the home of the toasted sandwich maker.

If anyone can think of a joke involving wood, organic things, sandwich toasters and France do let me know - I'm afraid the Tree of Bread was impressive enough for me just as it was.

He also had lobsters made of bread, which were good, but I noticed them on the way out and it was too late to ask for one, really.

Coming next: the guitarist made of Cognac.

Day 41: I Admire A Continental Hairstyle

This hairdo belongs to a gentleman of my acquaintance who has lived overseas (i.e., not in Blighty) for over three-and-a-half years.

The uncontrolled growth of an apparently random panel of hair at the back of the head seems to be an unfortunate and unavoidable consequence of living abroad, which leads me to believe that foreign travel should be avoided at all costs.


His defence was weak: he muttered something about 'not having had a haircut for 4 months' and 'business at the front, party at the back', and left the room suggesting that I 'examine my conscience' for having written this post at all. Can't win, really.