Someone up above seems to be wanting to warn me about the degeneration caused by getting old.
Not content with parading the freakish and sagging man titted bodies of those holidaying in Jersey, the God of Chaos decided to demonstrate the mental deficiancies that await us all, should we be unlucky enough not to be whisked off in an accident before our time, by sitting me next to a strange and unusual couple in their late middle age on the plane.
As I arrived at my seat, I made to sit down and the gentleman next to me smiled in a friendly way and kindly held back the buckle of my seat-belt so that I wouldn't sit on it. I thanked him and sat down. How nice!
But then as I scrabbled around for the other end of the belt he then picked up the buckle and attempted to cross it over my lap and fasten it for me (even though I didn't have the other end) clumsily brushing my genital region with his hand as he did so. He then laughed in my face,
not unlike the old witch grandmother had done in Northern Italy in 1986.
I told him it was all right and that I could do the rest myself and decided not to press charges for the minor (and almost certainly accidental, but if not, who could blame him? I'm a good looking man) sexual assault that had just taken place.
How come I always sit next to the nutters on public transport? I should do a routine about that. It's observational comedy at its best. Except this was the only nutter I have sat next to on public transport in the last four or five years and he was clearly genuinely slightly mentally ill so it might not be all that amusing.
His wife was also a bit deaf or doo-lally or both because she kept looking out the window and shouting very loud and inane observations such as "Here we go! Here we go!" as the engine's revved up or "Look at the cars down there. They look like ants!"
An unusual observation to make about cars. It's usually people who look like ants in this scenario. Unless the woman is used to multi-coloured, very fast moving ants.
Or maybe it was "Look at the cars down there. They look like ants'", by which I mean she thought the cars looked like they belonged to ants. But what kind of car would an ant have? Would it be of a totally different design more convenient for their six legs and lack of effective brains or understanding? Alas she didn't elucidate. Because even though it was only a short flight you can imagine that having her shouting out stupid and weird things really made me have a much more enjoyable time. If only I'd been travelling to Australia with them. Who knows how many times I would have been molested or forced to question what the world would be like if it was run by ants instead of humans.
As we were going into land I didn't have to just put up with the shouting of the slightly touched old woman, the happy molestor suddenly started whistling as if doing an impression of a world war two bomb falling to the earth. I am at the best of times a nervous flier and this association did not help me deal too well with the sensation of plummetting to earth in a large bit of metal filled up with flammable oil. This would have been the point to sexually molest me as I was vulnerable and scared and would have welcomed a last bit of human contact, even were it with an old man with Mini Cheddar crumbs around his mouth.
Thankfully we got home safe and sound so I would just have felt guilty and dirty had I succumbed.
And yet had the plane crashed then I would not have had to face the prospect of growing old myself and becoming slightly strange and simple, not in a way that means you have to be institutionalised, just in the way we all will one day be, unless science improves or we have the bravery to throw ourselves under a train the minute we hit 40.
I will enjoy my last few fleeting months of relative physical and mental health and then get back to you. But perhaps the senility will make me forget it's best for me to die. Ah, there's the rub.
