Cabin crew, seats for take-off

So, I’m settling in to my seat on the plane, wondering why in-flight magazines have all the finesse and writing style of a Sunday supplement in The Telegraph when:

Muffled Speaker overhead: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Head Steward Gary and I’d like to welcome you aboard this British Airways flight to London Heathrow this evening. We’ll hopefully be preparing to set-off in about 10 minutes, a little later than scheduled. Some of you may have noticed we have some musicians on board, and we’re currently waiting for some engineers to attend the aircraft to secure the cello that’s traveling with us this evening. Hopefuly we’ll see what we can do to make up this time once we’re in the air, but for now just sit back and relax, and I’ll keep you updated.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. So I now have an entire plane looking round to stare at me. And better still, they all know I’m the one making everyone late, so they’re more glaring than staring. Not to worry British Airways’ baggage handlers made us one whole bloody hour late because they didn’t watch the Count on Sesame Street carefully enough as children and put 1 too many suitcases on the place. Not to worry that on the way out the entire population of Terminal 4, except notably me who was otherwise indisposed on the toilet, knew that passenger Dury was travelling with a cello and needed to make himself known to personnel at the gate to board before all the other passengers, which he was going to make late.

Never mind all that, for now, right at this minute, I have everyone on a plane wanting to make sure that, in an emergency, I’m the last one down the chute because I’m the one that’s made everybody late.

The engineers in Oslo were very good at their work, although I’m not quite sure what they were expecting a cello to be. They brought strong-enough rope with them to tie down a grumpy pre-menstrual gorilla, and a long enough rope to reach all the way to bloody Heathrow and quite possibly back again.

They also took pride in their work. Put it this way- if they’d been part of Houdini’s stage-crew he’d never have made it to his first free Saga magazine and reduced AA insurance premium.

So there you have it. The world’s favourite airline – not so good at booking tickets or counting suitcases, but very good at tying knots.