Strangers On A Plane

Just got back from a week in Australia – been on a school trip. It was great. This focuses on the flight home.

I’m a little bit nervous about flying, although I’m gradually getting more and more comfortable with it. On my first flight over here from England I spent an awful lot of time wondering how something as heavy as a plane could actually stay airborne. I can put it out of my mind much more easily these days.

On the flight back from Australia I found it no problem at all to keep all thoughts of impending disaster out of my head. This is because I was sitting in the seat right at the back of the plane. This, I discovered, is where people congregate when they want to stretch their legs. One bloke, who is the subject of this entry, ended up stretching his legs for the last half hour of Walk The Line and the first hour of March Of The Penguins. His incessant, moronic disgorge of conversation ruined both films.

And now I’m going to share what he had to say with you.

He was from London and lived in Luton. I know this because he shouted it at anyone who had to queue for the toilet. He started off talking to an Australian bloke who stuck around bemused for a few minutes, wondering when he would be allowed to go to the toilet. Finally he interrupted Motormouth and went through. To his relief, when he came out, he had been replaced by a couple from Derby who had also come to the back of the plane to stretch their legs.

I listened to their conversation because I had no choice. Motormouth was leaning against the wall of the plane with his head directly above my head and he was bellowing:

“You know what the problem with England is? It’s gone to the dogs. It’s that Tony Blair. Tony Blair is shite. I don’t know nothing about politics, but I do know that he’s messed up the pensions. He just don’t understand that people don’t care about pensions. Live today, sod the future, that’s my motto. When he understands that’s the way people think, he might get more votes.”

I had Morgan Freeman’s monologue on penguins in one ear and this geezer’s monologue on pensions in the other. Next:

“I love going to Australia. Thing is, the amount I drink, the flight don’t cost that much. 750 quid my flight cost me, and I reckon I drink about a hundred quid’s worth of booze on the flight, so it’s only cost me about 600 quid.”

He returned to politics, but only to reiterate how little he knew about it (or anything) and to restate his stance on the future:

“I don’t know nothing about politics, I don’t know nothing about the NHS, I don’t know nothing about nothing, but what I do know is live today sod the future. And the other thing I know is that I had more money in my pocket when the Tories were in power.”

Religion:

“In Australia I noticed there weren’t any Church of England churches, which I thought was out of order. In England we’ve got all these funny churches from all over the place, don’t we? So our church should be everywhere too. And I got a question. Do you know the difference between Roman Catholics and Catholics?”
“They’re the same, I think,” replied one half of the bemused couple.
“That’s the kind of question you ask, isn’t it, and no one knows the answer to it. Where do you get the answers to them questions from?”

I began to realise that Motormouth reminded me of about five or six different characters from The Fast Show all rolled into one.

Alcohol:

“Usually I gets all my booze for free. Well, not really. Cos I delivers it, see, that’s my job, so it falls off the back of the lorry. I makes sure of that. Every couple of days another crate goes missing. It’s all right, though. They expect it. Everyone’s at it. It’s easy to get away with, too, cos I deliver in London. No one asks any questions.”

On his lorry’s mobile phone:

“Yeah, I got a company phone in my cab. I really abuse that phone! They can’t get me for it, neither, cos if they ever ask me to pay for it, I ask them for a VAT receipt, see?”

He then went on to explain how this meant that he could get away with it, but he lost me a bit there.

Finally, he also explained how he wouldn’t let a security guard at work search his car as he was leaving the premises:

“He asks me to open the glove box. I says no cos it’s not my car, it’s my girlfriend’s, and what’s in there’s private property. He says he’s gonna call the police, so I says go on then. And there’s loads of people behind me trying to get out of work too, but I don’t care. I sat on the bonnet of my car for ten minutes while they tried to get me to open the glove box but I wasn’t having none of it. They’re all beeping their horns behind me. In the end he just says go on, go home. See, I didn’t have nothing to hide, but if I can pick a fight, I will.”

This is the kind of person that I often find myself sitting next to. Usually I do exactly what the poor couple from Derby did, which is laugh politely, nod, say “yeah” a lot and pretend to agree with and approve of everything the man says. I feel that it’s much less hassle that way. A coward’s way out.

I’m not sure what’s worse: actually being spoken to by this sort of person, or being forced to sit there and listen to it because the conversation is taking place just above your head.

It’s not so much what he said that was objectionable, though. It was how he said it. He wanted as many people as possible to hear his conversation and wasn’t the slightest bit interested in anything the couple from Derby happened to say. There must be a term for this type of behaviour. Conversational selfishness, perhaps, or maybe monologuism.

Next time I’m sat next to a monologuer, for the moment at least, I’m feeling determined to tell them when I disagree with them and tell them when they don’t give me a chance to speak. By the time it happens, this determination will no doubt have become diluted by a resurgence of apathy and I’ll turn into a nodding dog as usual.