On the Plane
So we left Barcelona and Antoni Gaudi's amazingly idiosyncratic architecture:
and went to the airport.
"Could one of the seats be a seat C, please?" asked Stephen. This is because that's on the right of the left-hand set of seats, and hence my right leg, which had a DVT years ago and tends to hurt, has a bit more room in the aisle.
The man smiled sweetly and helpfully and then handed us boarding cards for seats A and B. Oh well, I thought, it's not that long a flight, I can put up with it.
So Stephen sat in A by the window, I was in B in the middle - - but then Posh Lady turned up and sat in C, with lots of carrier bags of perfume and things from the duty-free and nowhere to put them. (Now then, why, when they're so fanatical about just one item of hand luggage, is it suddenly okay if it's bags of things bought in the airport shops? Just asking).
So all her carrier bags overflowed onto my feet rather, and I began to feel distinctly hemmed in.
She spent a while reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being which made me want to make a sarky remark about the unbearable squashedness of being in the middle, but I didn't, because I was brung up proper.
And then she got out the Financial Times, which is old-fashioned broadsheet size, ie huge. And she held the right-hand page with her right-hand, and opened it right out, two pages, and this meant that her left hand, holding the left-hand page, was somewhere two-thirds across me, so I could only just see my book which was Julie Walters' autobiography - I think Posh Woman thought it a bit plebby, but it's very interesting as a matter of fact.
Anyway, I am British, and nowhere in my education have I been taught how to say "Excuse me, but your newspaper is now almost completely covering me, and I feel I have been newspapered out of existence, but I'm still here, though rather squashed and somewhat claustrophobic."
I did think of starting to read bits out loud to Stephen: "Hey, guess what it says here in this Financial Times that's RIGHT ACROSS MY BODY?"
And then I thought of saying to her, "Excuse me, but could you turn back to that last page, because I couldn't quite read all of it - the left side was fine because it's RIGHT ACROSS MY BODY but the right side was a bit tricky. It's me here, Daphne, speaking from UNDER YOUR NEWSPAPER."
And then I thought of seizing her by the hair and stuffing her past Stephen and out through the plane window, bit by bit if necessary.
But I'm British, so I didn't do any of these things, just suffered in a martyred kind of a way.
On our flight to Florida (that's TWO WEEKS TODAY WOOOOOHOOOOO!) I have specifically requested an aisle seat, with the aisle on my right.
I'm telling you now, if that doesn't happen, and if I don't get my aisle seat, and if you happen to be sitting on my right and fancy covering me with your newspaper, then by the end of the flight I will have killed you. Dead. Probably using plastic cutlery, so it will take a while. I hope that's clear now.
and went to the airport."Could one of the seats be a seat C, please?" asked Stephen. This is because that's on the right of the left-hand set of seats, and hence my right leg, which had a DVT years ago and tends to hurt, has a bit more room in the aisle.
The man smiled sweetly and helpfully and then handed us boarding cards for seats A and B. Oh well, I thought, it's not that long a flight, I can put up with it.
So Stephen sat in A by the window, I was in B in the middle - - but then Posh Lady turned up and sat in C, with lots of carrier bags of perfume and things from the duty-free and nowhere to put them. (Now then, why, when they're so fanatical about just one item of hand luggage, is it suddenly okay if it's bags of things bought in the airport shops? Just asking).
So all her carrier bags overflowed onto my feet rather, and I began to feel distinctly hemmed in.
She spent a while reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being which made me want to make a sarky remark about the unbearable squashedness of being in the middle, but I didn't, because I was brung up proper.
And then she got out the Financial Times, which is old-fashioned broadsheet size, ie huge. And she held the right-hand page with her right-hand, and opened it right out, two pages, and this meant that her left hand, holding the left-hand page, was somewhere two-thirds across me, so I could only just see my book which was Julie Walters' autobiography - I think Posh Woman thought it a bit plebby, but it's very interesting as a matter of fact.
Anyway, I am British, and nowhere in my education have I been taught how to say "Excuse me, but your newspaper is now almost completely covering me, and I feel I have been newspapered out of existence, but I'm still here, though rather squashed and somewhat claustrophobic."
I did think of starting to read bits out loud to Stephen: "Hey, guess what it says here in this Financial Times that's RIGHT ACROSS MY BODY?"
And then I thought of saying to her, "Excuse me, but could you turn back to that last page, because I couldn't quite read all of it - the left side was fine because it's RIGHT ACROSS MY BODY but the right side was a bit tricky. It's me here, Daphne, speaking from UNDER YOUR NEWSPAPER."
And then I thought of seizing her by the hair and stuffing her past Stephen and out through the plane window, bit by bit if necessary.
But I'm British, so I didn't do any of these things, just suffered in a martyred kind of a way.
On our flight to Florida (that's TWO WEEKS TODAY WOOOOOHOOOOO!) I have specifically requested an aisle seat, with the aisle on my right.
I'm telling you now, if that doesn't happen, and if I don't get my aisle seat, and if you happen to be sitting on my right and fancy covering me with your newspaper, then by the end of the flight I will have killed you. Dead. Probably using plastic cutlery, so it will take a while. I hope that's clear now.
posted by Daphne at 11:28 pm
7 Comments:
What an ignorant posh woman! I mean her not you! On the flight to Florida you should have been requesting a seat with extra leg room as in the seats at the emergency exit. This gives you the added advantage of being first to the inflatable yellow slide when your plane is floating mid-Atlantic!
It also means you have to be the one to open the door and presumably watch while 324 of your fellow passengers push past you to get onto that slide.
I'm going to have to work on you to stick up for your bit of space on a plane. Hell you've paid enough for it. I think a plastic knife through the ear (while no one is looking of course) would've sorted ignorant bitch. Hate those types.
And I hate to 'worry' you but I never got the seat I'd so carefully picked and registered for myself for my flight to Florida. My first and last time using Virgin Atlantic.
lol poor you that sounds horrid but you tell the story well so I'm giggling.
You should have been given the seats you wanted. Why do these people always pull that trick? Coming back from Egypt in September it was the same for us. There were 4 of, I asked for "four seats together please" (i.e. we'd have had 2 aisle seats and 1 window as it was 3x3) and instead the guy gave us 2x AB meaning we had no aisle seats at all and were hemmed in.
People in low paid, repetitive customer facing jobs sometimes get their kicks by deliberately pissing people off it seems.
See if you can check in online. We fly to Egypt tomorrow, and were able to choose our seats from a plan of the aircraft.
Oooh, only a few weeks to go! I bet you're looking forward to it. Have a lovely time Daphne.
Thank you, everyone. Dizzy, I hope you have a great time in Egypt! Silverback did choose a seat and book it online, I know - - but still didn't get it. And I've done that for Florida - - and it's crucial that I do get an aisle seat so I'll have to make a huge fuss if I haven't got one sighhhhhhhh.
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