Head in the clouds


Flying back, jammed into the middle of the 51st row of a BA 747 with a malfunctioning in flight entertainment system, I fell to sleep soon after we departed Changi, waking six hours later as we flew through rough air somewhere above one ‘stan or another.

I’d had a dream where my wife and I and my child had gone to visit the pub from Time Gentlemen Please, the sitcom starring Al Murray, The Pub Landlord from more than ten years ago. To get there we had to go through an underpass where one of my ex-girlfriends kept walking past, shooting vitriolic glances at the three of us, until we finally got inside the pub, where we received a warm welcome. And then I’d woken up, plucked back from the boozy fug of a pub near Camden, to another six hours sitting down in a cramped environment.

My nose was running. I hope I haven’t actually contracted an airborne ailment, but for a couple of hours my sinuses just pumped out liquid, and I had nothing to blow my nose on. Jammed into my seat, people asleep to either side of me, I dripped and dripped for hours until my nose ran dry. Then I sat there, dehydrated and disgusted at myself, too scared to drink any water in case that allowed my nose to run again.

Otherwise, an uneventful flight. We arrived at 5:53am and my suitcase emerged soon after I did, and then I had the still-strange for me experience of being met at arrivals by a taxi driver with my name on a sign. As if I was somebody important. We careered back across London, rattling around inside an enormous people carrier, and I tried to keep my eyes inside my head and not dissolve to nothingness before I could get to bed.


One response to “Head in the clouds”

  1. Scroll down, miss the fact that you have woken up, think that you are dreaming about your nose running.

    Hope the meeting is worth all this.

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