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Travel Made Difficult

Ah, the joys of flying. Enjoy the bracing ten minute walk from the car park to the airport.

Discover the bag you’ve measured does not fit into the little frame for acceptable cabin-sized baggage.

Be confident that you have no dangerous objects such as tweezers, razors or nail scissors. Be prepared to embrace your masculine side and spend your holiday growing big eyebrows and leg hair.

Discover that a sealed carton of non-dairy milk is considered an explosive risk in the cabin.

Pay just £6 to have your bag put in the hold but, before it goes off on the conveyor belt, unpack and re-arrange the contents in order to accommodate said milk, ignoring queue forming behind you.

Be turned back from the departure lounge because you have a sealed carton of fruit juice and a bottle of mineral water to drink in the departure lounge and during the flight, AND to bag up any small vials of perfume or cosmetics.

Return to security having eaten lunch and drunk all liquids, and roll towards the lady who gives you a thorough frisking, with stomach feeling dangerously explosive, and avoiding any sharp objects.

Escape from the loud television and be entertained by infuriating muzak THE WHOLE TIME, even in the loo, and try to not to succumb to air rage before you’ve left the airport.

But, thank heaven, on board, Keane is playing in the cabin, then the Zutons’ ‘Valerie’, and your peevish temper is soothed. The plane is only a quarter full and there is space to recover from hasty liquid lunch.

Forget any frustrations when the plane lines herself up on the runway. The pilot opens up the throttle and off she goes with a little arse wiggle before tearing forward and lifting off as softly as a kiss.

She tucks up her wheels and, below, sigh, dear old England, so beautiful where it is still green. It occurs to me as I fly over Torbay and look down on the treacherous bar stretched across the mouth of the River Teign that, with all our advancement and technology, we could just blow the damned thing up, let the river flow freely out into the wide bay. From up here those waters look so blue, so benign, so deceptive.
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