The day started early even for me. Boarded the plane at 6.00 am – announcement that there was ‘a baggage anomaly’, and we can’t move till it’s resolved. Ten minutes later it’s resolved, but we’ve lost our slot for take-off and landing at Gatwick – estimated take-off time now 7.55 am. In fact 7.45 we took off and 20 minutes into the flight breakfast is served – said breakfast has been kept piping hot for over two hours, and manages to appear even less appetising than usual. Manage to salvage some edible bits, then we hit turbulence and ‘tea and coffee service is suspended’.

Where else in modern life are you more restricted by a totalitarian regime than a plane once you’ve boarded it? About two feet square of space, with just enough leg room for a man my size – poor guy next to me was bigger than me horizontally and vertically. Between us, trying to avoid elbowing each other, as fragments of breakfast ascended precariously attached to the plastic fork, and the turbulence adding a bit of unpredictability, we managed to negotiate the space between us in a semi-civilised way. Took it in turns using the elbow room….! And all this as we daintily maneuovered around the items on the small plastic tray, all the deemed to be essential acoutrements of an airborne re-fuelling exercise, plastic cutlery, cup, orange carton inflated by air pressure, sugar tube, milk, salt / pepper, roll in a ballooned plastic sealed bag, kerrygold butter, and foil metal tray with previously mentioned pre-fried, long-life breakfast.(I mean the breakfast was long-life – not the eater once the dietary impact of over indulgence in this sort of thing kicks in). The one above looks better than the one I had.

Why do we do this? I suppose cos, late plane or not, I left Glasgow at 8.00, was in Gatwick at 9.20, on a train at 9.30, in a taxi at 9.55, and in Spurgeon’s College by 10.10. Meeting finished at 1.00pm – quick lunch, then I did it all backwards and was home by 5.15 pm. And left a dirty big carbon print somewhere up there around 35,000 feet at 550 mph. Would going in the train have been greener? Would refusing breakfast have been healthier? Did the negotiated settlement of surrounding the eating arrangements contribute to peacemaking strategies? Dinna ken….but I’m glad I don’t do this all that often. It is, in the full technical, existential, social and personal senses, dehumanising.