Further Under the Duvet by Marian Keyes Page B

and still no one gets in beside me. I hardly dare let myself hope. Like, what are the chances?
No, I won’t let myself think it, I won’t even entertain the thought
. But then the trolley dollies start making their ‘cross-check’ and ‘cross-hatch’ noises and my hope can no longer be contained. It breaks free and goes on the rampage. Could it possibly be…? Have I really been given the luxury of space and privacy and fragrant-ish air for this flight? Thank you, God, oh thank you!
    And then I hear it: the faint pounding noise, which gets nearer and louder. Please, God, no, I beg. I can actually feel it now, the plane is shaking slightly with each rumble – the unmistakable sound of a twenty-stone smelly person running down the metal walkway. With a sinking heart I hear the groan of metal straining as he steps onto the plane and he makes his way directly towards me, the floor buckling and creaking with each step. After ten minutes of banging and clattering, as he tries to fit his rocket-launcher into the overhead compartment, he fights his way into his seat, gives me a gap-toothed smile and unwraps his kebab.
    If only that was all I had to endure, but as airlines have also cut back on (i.e. sacked) their maintenance staff, I usually spend the flight with my table tray crashing down onto my knees every time the person in the seat in front breathes.
    Eventually we reach our destination, and after we have staved off the curse of Icarus and prevented the wings from falling off by completing the ritual thirty circles over the entire city, we’re allowed to land. Only to discover – why, why, why? – that we have to sit on the tarmac like a crowdof goms because they can’t find a set of steps for us. This is the point when I start talking to myself, pretending to be the local air-traffic control people. ‘A plane, you say? Landed? What,
here
? And you all want to get off? Steps, is it? And a coach? And what magic wand do you expect us to wave? Look, we’ll do our best to accommodate you this once but bear in mind this is an
airport
, we’re not equipped for this sort of thing.’
    A speedy couple of hours polishes off the passport control, the luggage carousel, the unattended luggage desk to report the unarrived luggage and the taxi queue ‘managed’ by some power-crazed weirdo who understands the laws of the universe in an entirely different way to the rest of us. Then, after a soupçon of heavy traffic – finally, I ARRIVE!
    Come in, they say, sit down, no
lie
down, on a silken feather bed and have some nectar. Ambrosia, so? KitKat Chunky? Wide-screen TV? Jo Malone candles? Foot-rub? Spot of reiki? Sex with George Clooney? Just say it and you can have it.
    See, TRAVEL = horrible and ARRIVE = nice.
    Surely we’re all agreed on it? Apparently something like a hundred and twelve per cent of regular travellers say that the one thing that would transform their quality of life would be a ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ machine so that they could just arrive directly at their destination and cut out all that nasty pesky travelling.
    But in the absence of that, ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce the unique Stack ’n’ Fly System (currently pending patent). The brainchild of seasoned traveller… er… me and my friend Malcolm – this is how it works. You checkyour bags in as usual, go to your gate, lie down on a stretcher, get strapped in, then a nurse comes along and administers a knock-out shot. You’re totally out cold and until you arrive at your destination, you know nothing. Not delays, not kebab-man, nothing.
    The seats would be removed from the planes so that several stretchers could be stacked on top of each other, not unlike the onboard catering trolleys (which, of course, there would no longer be any need for). That way there would be room for the airlines to get loads more passengers in, so everyone’s happy. Instead of air-hostesses on board, we’d have a nurse who’d patrol the aisle with a hypodermic