As I write this, I'm located in row 16, seat F of a Boeing 767-200 (an airplane that feels just too... small for the journey its making. Ahead of me lies first class, obscured by a gauze curtain through which I'm sticking my feet (much to the irritaton of the stewardess.) To my left is a child that began screaming as soon as the wheels left the ground and shows every sign of keeping it up for the next 8 hours. To my right is a man who made the sign of the cross upon take-off and has been quietly gripping the arms of his seat ever since.
Actually, I'm feeling a little guilty about him. As the stewardess did the life jacket demonstration he muttered: "I hate this bit..." I agreed, "Yes, I can't think of an occasion where one of these planes successfully ditched. There was that African hijack a few years ago where the plane ran out of fuel and the pilot almost made it, but the fuselage broke in two upon contact with the water and half the passengers drowned anyway..."
He hasn't spoken to me since.
An hour ago I was in the airport, eating bad food in a bad restaurant. Airports are odd places - we try and do normal things; we shop, we eat, we drink in an almost-familiar environment, each of us trying not to think about the unnatural thing we'll be doing in a few too-short hours. And when I say 'unnatural' I mean the whole business of blasting through the air in a pressurised aluminium tube at Mach 0.8, not the thing with the rubber hose and donkey that those heading for Amsterdam are planning.
There's both a sense of tension and denial in the air.
Or is it just me?
