If only Icarus had kept his table tray up!

Multi-cultural is fair-enough, in fact that state of Utopia should be heroically strived for provided the objective is to both accept and celebrate the differences and not to create a bland amalgam that stands for everything and means nothing. But as I worked my way through the entry filters that all countries seem to have in their heightened state of self-induced paranoia, out of approximately seven people that I had to deal with, only one was Australian!

South Africans, Phillipinos, Germans, Croatians, Brits, and Malayans; is this really Australia?

Where have all the Aussies, aboriginal or pioneering (even if it was only to leave the Fields of Athenry), gone?

I finally got to meet my first local at the final checkpoint. He was a big lad; 6ft 4” or more, with atypical red-hair and pale skin.

This was the place where they check for foodstuffs and substances which are not allowed into the country - there’s no ‘nothing to declare’ channel.

The fellow in front was being given the usual suspicious interrogation.

“Any foodstuffs, drugs, pets, drugs, perishable items, drugs………etc etc?”

Drugs seemed to be the main focus of attention!

He was sent to have his baggage examined.

Now it was my turn, I swallowed the last of the mints they had given me on the plane and looked on the bright side of my recent trials in Spain. They had nicked all my drugs there! -----JOKING!!

“Where have you flown in from mate?”

“Glasgow pal”

“What’s that badge on the side of the green bag?”

Even after the evnts at Toronto, I didn’t hesitate (even Customs interrogators can read after all) and replied confidently…

“Celtic”

While I didn’t expect him to break into ‘You’ll never walk alone” (Toronto had not completely been erased from my memory) I didn’t expect what followed either.

“OK, your clear straight through”

I was so surprised I nearly questioned his decision.

Fortunately with that my mood began to lighten and here I am, still with my lap-top and all my luggage.

The trip hasn’t been without its fraught moments of impending doom and disaster, but I think the combined effects of suspicion (from recent events in Barcelona) and exhaustion have been a major contributory factor in those.

Tiredness has long been a misunderstood part of the human psyche. For too long it has been ignored in favour of the examination of sleep, dreams, nightmares and REM. (Although why anyone should want to study an 80’s Brit pop group at all, escapes me!)

Tiredness is seen by too many as a simple by-product of being awake for too long, and considered as nothing more than the skeleton of a day’s physical efforts, denuded of its muscle by the graft swinging a hammer, wielding a pen, kicking a ball, invading a middle-eastern potentate or bringing a first world country’s banking system to its knees.

In source, cause and effect however tiredness can be seen as so much more than the simple depletion of physical resources, far more powerful than simply needing to sleep, and more mysterious than even the alter-egos of the sandman who visits us with those gentle dreams and terrifying nightmares of the eight hours between the sheets, in a shop doorway, or like me most recently on a 36 hour long haul from Glasgow to Sydney.

After that it is clear that the irritable ennui of tiredness is no corruption of our more normal and lively personas, but an essential ingredient of our autonomous nervous system that albeit like heads to tails, or black to white, both fashions our actions and emotions all day and every day bringing a darker pessimism and negativity to the more optimistic liveliness of our undoubtedly sun basked personalities!

No, tiredness is not something to be eliminated and avoided but almost a necessary emotional response to be welcomed and understood as a Darwinian mechanism that gives an edge in the rat race of survival!

I mean, if the simple fact that after 27 hours flying time both stimulated and depressed by copious amounts of beer and wine, an epitome of tranquil contemplation (that’s me by the way) has to ‘Muttley-growl’ under his breath to contain his growing cynicism at the whole irrational and condescending charade of the in-flight Pavlovian customer conditioning, then it occurs to me that ‘tiredness’ may very well be the first stimulus for all sorts of great corrective deeds of the past.

After all we get ‘tired of’ this, ‘tired of that’, and tired of the next thing’. That’s when we do something about it.

Let’s be honest Brutus got tired of Caesar, Wallace got tired of Edward, France got tired of royalty, the Soviet Union got tired of communism, Brother Walfrid got tired of hunger in the East end of Glasgow, and I got tired of listening to Aussie soaps on television. (I don't see them here in Oz)

I know that some less than great things have also been done through tiredness, but that just demonstrates the essential neutrality of this phenomena. After all nuclear power, or knifes, or guns or scissors are not per se evil, but how we use them is, and ‘being knackered’ may very well have the unstoppable potential to weed out evil in this world, or the equally immovable latency to lay waste to culture and progress!

Anyway eventually when we get ‘tired’ of something, it’s then that we do something about it!
And if ever something needed to be done, then the pointlessness of flight protocols and the (excuse the pun) elevated status that pilots and cabin crew give themselves really gets my hackles getting into training for an attempt at the world hackle-rising record.

For God’s sake the Pilot is a bus driver and the Cabin crew are waiters and cleaners.

This is no attempt to demean any of those two categories, but I don’t get on a bus (although I have noted the neurosis starting to infiltrate train personnel) and go through the nonsense that accompanies a plane journey.

So through the essential sensitivity of ‘tiredness’ I started to ask and answer my own question regarding just what this whole farrago of flight disciplines is all about!

First, just why can’t I be left alone to sleep?

Flying from any point A to any point B, is now no more than the aerial equivalent of “One Flew Over The Cuckoos’ Nest” where Nurse Ratched and her cohorts are dressed in the livery of BA/Quantas cabin crew, the inmates sit around taking their directions and medicines on schedule, to order, and as decreed by ‘those who know better’, while in some of us the fuse of R.P. McMurphy burns towards the explosion of ‘air rage’.

For God’s sake, just why do the blinds have to up for take-off and landing (other than the pilots that is)?

Why must the cabin lights be dimmed for take-off and landing in the hours of darkness? After all we can all put on our overhead lights?

Why even more mysteriously does the upright angle of the seat backs have to simulate a brush handle down the back of our shirts?

Why are we patronised by the statement that ’you may have travelled on a plane many times, but that subtle differences are to be found in this one’ ? NO THEY’RE NOT!

And further I couldn’t give a monkey’s what the pilot, co-pilot and even more ridiculously the cabin crew’s names are and how they are there primarily for my comfort and well being!- NO THEY’RE NOT.

They are there to maximise the amount of hard earned cash from their captive audience.

Listen , if a plane is about to crash, the least of my worries is whether the guy in front has his seat at a slightly more gradual angle; if we hit terra firma, or even ‘aqua slightly less firma’ with the impact of an asteroidal collision then the fact that he/she/me has a table-tray down, or that objects falling from the overhead lockers may hit me on the head, takes on all the importance of a shaving nick in the "Bates' Motel"!

And as for this preoccupation for reminding people that smoking is illegal anywhere on the plane; well they don’t also say that rubbing two sticks in the quest for fire or kids playing with the chemistry set that their auntie Mary bought them for Christmas is also illegal.

We sort of know that.

Anyway, it’s far more likely that someone will get third degree burns or contract beri-beri from the rubbish that is now proffered straight from the microwave as in-flight catering.

As an aside, being a non-smoker of ten years or so, I have also contemplated carrying a single Cigarette and lighter with me just in case of the catastrophic loss of power at 35,000 feet. Believe me that I would calmly light up as we plummeted to our fates but I suspect that while it may prove to be the most enjoyable cigarette ever dragged, there would also be an announcement informing me that in the unlikely event of my survival, the police would be waiting to arrest me!

"All mobile phones must be switched off"!

Of course vthey must, after all the airlines have invented a revolutionary new technology which means that people can use 'their' mobile technology instead, and pay through the nose for its use. This new technology is called 'changing the rules when profit is at stake'!

“All hand luggage must be stored in the overhead lockers or placed safely under the seats in front of you”!

Really?

As the quest for squeezing more and more people onto a plane in order to maximise ‘ROI’ (Return on Investment, NOT Republic of Ireland’) it is likely that Easyjet and Ryan Air will lead the field to set restrictions on height, leg length and hip size as well as setting the agenda on the size of wallet you will be allowed to carry. After all they will need all the space they can get their tiny grubby hands on to ensure that ‘Gin and Tonic sir?’ or ’Coffee madam?’ can be offered at the same cost as the flight did in the first place. (You can still get economic flights with the above two carriers, provided you don’t want to take any luggage and are prepared to fly in the nude)

BA and the others will then follow suit or should that be birthday-suit!

So as the inside of the aircraft is gradually filled with human Lego and all other space is taken up by replete overhead lockers and over spilling underseat spaces, where do we then stick the cushions, blankets, socks, eye-masks and other paraphernalia that are provided ‘for our comfort and safety’?

Well, if airlines could also set a rule as regards the alimentary orifice of staff working in the cabin, I know exactly where I would stick them.

So treat us with some intelligence and be honest.

I really won’t verge on the edge of psychosis if I know WHY things are done as you suggest. I won’t become tired of the charade, and I won’t store up every little inconvenience until it becomes one big grudge that demands ‘something must be done”

For when ‘something must be done’ it usually is.

Something had to be done about Hitler, Ceausescu, Communism, Capitalism, Bush, Blair, Thatcher, ‘the Board’, John Barnes and Bertie Vogts.

So my friends in the SS Cabin Crew, don’t think you are immune!

Oh and by the way, you are not alone!

Having been cheered up by the reception from Mick (my name for my Aussie mate at customs), I was then surprised to find that Ned Kelly is still alive and flourishing in the antipodes!

He now dresses in the attire of the airport Vodafone representative.

This one is still running but when it comes to a head……believe me ‘something will have to be done’ - and when it is you will hear all about it!

For the moment G’Day and ……

Hail Hail

Matt