Its a long way from LA to Denver

As the late John Denver sang, " its a long time to hang in the sky ". My thoughts turn to long haul air travel

Is it to be enjoyed, or endured ? In my circumstances it depends on who, or what, will be at the end of that journey. I my case, this time, it will be my son and his wife in Australia. Something, most definitely to look forward to.

But and there is always a but, will the journey be hassle free and pleasant? This again is an opportunity to witness, at first hand, why human beings are so fascinating a species to observe.

The silliness of their actions and I include myself in this, beggars belief. You are given adequate time to check in and get rid of your luggage, but you still create self tension by either arriving too late, or too early. " When are they going to open the desks"?, is a moan " the queues are building up". More tension, for no reason.

Then, the boarding of the plane. I have left out the immigration and security aspect as the prospects of writing about the silly behaviours would take too much space and time, but it may be revisited at a later stage.

 The main event is to try to second guess the gate attendants. They hang around the gate desk idly chatting and teasing us by leaning near to the desk microphone. Come on, own up, we have all watched intently for this, so we can leap up from our seats to be the first in some imaginary self created scrum to get on the plane in pole position.

 Is it not better to rationalise that its along haul flight, it will be called in seat rows, you have been allocated a seat, the flight is a minimum of 7 hours and for most of it you will be sat. Oh no!! some imaginary foe is beating you to your right to board the plane, when you want to board, not when you are told to board by some young girl who was in a pram when you first travelled.

I have been that caveman. I have created chaos, I have used my two young sons as human shields to gain only a few feet of queue space. For this I apologise firstly to my wife, who's patience I have so patently tested, but mainly to all the ground staff at so many airports throughout Europe and the rest of the world.





My next flight will be pure serenity and calm. That is my intention.....but if that person thinks he can push in front of me when I've queued all this time !!!!