On board

I don't know about you, but I always step on board an aircraft with trepidation. The way I look at it, this could be the last few hours of my life, so I am right to be cautious.

Early on, there is that brief practice session for how you need to behave in the event of an emergency - but this early moment is called getting to your seat in economy class. Elbowing your fellow passengers in the face, assaulting them with your hand baggage, blocking all their ingenious attempts to pass you - simply by the strategic placement of an enormous backside - these are all methods I might need later in getting to the emergency doors first, so I try them out now while there is still time.

Then there is the fear. You might be forced to sit next to someone who can only sit comfortably if they sit in half your seat too, or someone who makes chuffing sounds, or someone who snores, or glances at you then turns away in disgust. Or maybe someone who scratches themselves before examining the undersides of their fingernails and, while you watch in horror, glances at you and pauses, with their fingers hovering about their lips. All these are true of family members too, so I choose wisely in the seat allocations.

And if I choose the lesser of the optional evils and sit next to the mini human who needs two seats and is capable of making buffalo sounds while swinging off doorhandles, then I must find a hundred things to do, just in case I need to be motherly, and distract them while we take off. Or maybe while we taxi back to the terminal because one of the passengers has sustained a head injury already and needs to be offloaded to have their head examined.

With an hour to kill while their bags are offloaded from the plane, and ours hopefully returned, I can peruse the seating space I have, which I note in passing is probably less than the space I will get for a coffin, and I begin a tour of the delights to sustain us for a twelve hour journey.

Admittedly these are vastly improved from the time even I have travelled, but they are yet still meagre at two buttons, a non-turnoffable overhead lightbulb, and a flip-down tray. Nevertheless I go about declaring these the solutions to all our lifetime problems, probably as if they were to deliver us the second coming.

Look! I cry to my fellow passenger who is already deeply engrossed in button pumping, This button will make the film happen! My fellow passenger glances at me in disgust and scornfully says she already has the entertainment system worked out thank you very much and it would assist her greatly if I moved over a bit and turned off my overhead light.

After contemplating the buttons, the space my left leg requires and how that is mathematically impossible unless I bend it at right angles two inches above the calf, I can look forward to the inflight meal.

Now this has much improved, hasn't it? I have learned not to choose vegan, because that is the option where they remove everything edible from the plastic tray, including the bread roll, packet of peanuts and salad dressing, then pass you an apple. Dinner comes early, delivered by a crew member who looks like he holds down a part-time job as a nightclub bouncer. The gash on his forehead is probably last night's clientele, or maybe the offloaded passenger who never got further than Heathrow.

So we travel. I sit there half dozing, twitching, bending my left leg round corners, watching scenes of Shutter Island backwards, drifting in and out of consciousness, passing time with paranoid schizophrenics, cabin bouncers, migrating apples, and buffaloes who snuffle and grunt, and all the time anticipating death or safe arrival in a house on an island, up a hill with a town below, and a jungle behind.