When the cabin crew capo spoke on the public address system, she expected nothing less than our undivided attention. We had to suspend our conversations ‘right now’ or ‘right at this moment’. Her accent, I think, was Sydney suburbs. But this one passenger had the sheer gall to continue reading his Daily Mail right through the safety demonstration. Well, she wasn’t having that. She abruptly suspended the demonstration at the oxygen mask stage until the offending newspaper was lowered.
The man was so engrossed in his paper he was oblivious to everything going on around him. She leaned an elbow against the wall in a sort of sarcastic ‘against our better judgment we allow passengers to read newspapers on the flight, and this is what happens’ posture. The man was wearing red braces and perhaps unaware that any vestiges of pretence that budget airline passengers are fellow human beings had been lately cast aside. He was beaming with pleasure at what he was reading. With a stab of her eyes, she dispatched a junior cabin attendant (he looked about 12) to have a word.
I was wedged between an elderly couple. We were in easyJet purgatory bound for Gatwick hell. After the demonstration I said to the man, ‘Thank goodness, that’s over.’ I said it as a conversational gambit and it worked. I got the life story.
He was a proper cockney. He’d been a stonemason since leaving school and he’d worked mainly on castles, stately homes and cathedrals. He’d worked for all the high-ups: millionaires, billionaires, royalty. On one occasion he was doing a job at Windsor Castle and he’d walked backwards into Princess Margaret, sending her ‘base over apex’. They were both in a heap on the floor and he’d said, ‘Gor blimey, girl, are you all right?’ And then he’d seen who he was talking to and said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, speaking to you like that. I didn’t see who you was.’
In the middle of every other sentence he had to pause to catch his breath. After pausing on one occasion, he panted, ‘Bloody ’ell, fella, I’m on me way aht.’ ‘Emphysema?’ I said. No, it wasn’t that. His doctor had put him on a new tablet for the rheumatoid arthritis in his arms, and his body had reacted violently against it. His skin had ‘peeled ’orf’ in its entirety and instead of ameliorating the rheumatoid arthritis, the new tablet had somehow caused it to spread fatally to his lungs. I expressed sympathy. He shrugged and said it was ‘one of them fings’.
When the plane landed and the cabin crew capo had given permission to rise and disembark, I saw the difficulty he had getting to his feet and I offered to carry his and his wife’s carry-on luggage into the arrivals hall. They both cheerfully waved away the suggestion. At the foot of the wheeled steps I encountered him again. He was waiting for a courtesy wheelchair and for his wife. ‘Nice to talk to ya, fella,’ he said. Then something on my chest arrested his attention. He stared, then he said, ‘I don’t like your tie, though. It’s f***ing crap.’ The tie was my best tie: pink roses against bright green leaves, silk. Nobody had said anything against it up in Scotland. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ said his wife, who had now caught up. ‘Crap!’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t catch me wearing a tie like that.’ Mystified by the vehemence of his dislike, I continued on towards the arrivals hall.
A long, static queue had formed before we were even inside the terminal. The stonemason and his wife caught up with me again. The tie still rankled. ‘Excuse me, look at that fella’s tie!’ he said at random to a young woman and the two teenage girls standing with her in the queue. ‘Crap, ain’t it?’ The young woman not only looked, she said, ‘Yes, it is.’ And she went further. ‘So what are you saying? What statement are you trying to make with that tie? Come on — tell us!’ Her instant dislike of my tie — or of me — seemed every bit as strong as the stonemason’s. ‘Surely what he is trying to say, my dear,’ he panted, ‘is that he is an uphill gardener.’ ‘Cyril!’ said his wife. ‘We like it! We like it,’ sang the teenagers, bouncing on their toes. I turned in gratitude to my supporters and sincerely thanked them. ‘Or a paedophile,’ spat the stonemason. ‘Cyril!’ said his wife.
I couldn’t believe it. On display on the plane, and now in the queue, was the most extraordinary array of costume, or lack of it, possible. And out of the blue a dying stonemason was orchestrating a vicious attack on my tie. My best tie. Fortunately, the queue now began to move and I was able to forge ahead and away from my critics.
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