Rav Casley Gera

Flying is an incredibly weird experience. And unlike other weird experiences, which you get used to - like, say, massages - flying just gets weirder the more you do it. Once the initial, childhood rush of isn’t-this-exciting wears off, you start to notice the little details, and the sense of otherness just increases. Take toilets. Airline toilets remind me of coach toilets, which is more than enough reason to avoid them. Plus, apart from a bridal suite, there is probably no other place on earth more associated in the popular consciousness with sex than aeroplane toilets. So as a perennial singleton, I usually avoid them, aided by my inability to properly hydrate myself on planes (more on that later). But when, flying back from the US recently, I did find myself using the toilet and the thought occurred to me just how weird it was. Not because it was dirty or broken. Or lacking in basic facilities. Not the kind of weird - visceral weird, violently-different weird - that people travel to Bangkok and Manilla and Addis Ababa for. Rather, this was weird precisely because it had everything a normal toilet has - paper, sink, soap, bin, even a sanitary towel bin - in a space about 2 foot square. A miracle of miniaturization, of engineering, of civilization, with me just sitting in the middle of it, doing about the least civilised thing humans still do.

And as soon as I realised this I realised just how weird all of flying is. The meals - not bad, just not real, with curry and rolls and dessert all carefully sealed in plastic. The hyper-clear cups, cleaner and more pleasing to eye than any glass, so your eye is drawn to every movement of the water inside - and which go in the bin as soon as you’re finished. Pillows and blankets - some of the most natural, comforting, emotionally resonant things - served in plastic bags. Everything seeming normal, like normal life, but smaller, neater, more packaged, and just not the same. And then you realise your whole world right now is a smaller, neater, packaged world, because it’s been squeezed into a large metal tube. And the reason it’s all so crafted to look like the outside world is to draw your attention away from the fact that you are thousands and thousands of feet up in the air. And, of course, just one mechanical failure away from a violent death.

This realisation prompted vague panic. They say that sometimes veteran flyers, businessmen in their forties, have a sudden realisation of how basically bonkers flight is, have a panic attack, and never fly again. On the way over, I’d felt a distinct unease, but I put that down to worrying that, having had a mild security-queueing nightmare at Gatwick, I’d been unable to get any dollars, and although I knew I ought to be able to withdraw some from my UK card at any ATM, if I couldn’t, I’d be stranded at Newark (in the end, of course, it was fine). This time, I had no excuse - I was going home, I had a few quid and money in my account (well, money standing between me and my overdraft limit, which is the modern equivalent), and I’d had lovely views of New York on the way out. Yet I still felt a distinct unease.

So, of course, mother nature picked that moment to send us through an hour of turbulence.

Curled up against the closed window, trying to get to sleep and ignore the bumping, I let my mind wander. Not a good idea. The following is an attempted transcript of just some of the dribble that rushed through my travel-overloaded, sleep-deprived brain:

I’m thirsty. There’s a hostess; ask for some water. Oh, no, I shouldn’t bother her. Why not, you idiot? You’re thirsty, they’ll bring water. It’s their job. I don’t want to be any trouble, I’m sure they’ll bring the trolley round soon anyway. You’re paying four hundred pounds to sit in this damn tube for seven hours! Ask for water! (I didn’t.) The guy next to me (American, 18 maybe, with a baseball cap and small eyes) looks bored. Maybe I should talk to him? Nah, I don’t want to, I want to sleep. But do I really not want to, or am I just scared to, like I’m scared to ask for water? Am I scared of strangers? Why am I so scared of strangers? (Eventually he spoke to me, asking if I had a pen for the visa form. I didn’t. We also sort of grunted at each other when he came back from the toilet, and I got up to go and he let me past). Is my inability to talk to strangers the reason my career isn’t going anywhere? Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Your career isn’t going nowhere, you’re only 26. And besides, you can talk to strangers when necessary, you’re not some cocktail-party-phobic. You’re good with strangers. Just not when there’s no need, not idle chatter. Maybe I should be a standup comedian (yes, I really thought this). All this insecure-internal-monologue stuff is actually quite funny. I could have a whole routine about how I’m smart but I’m not getting anywhere in life because I won’t ask airline hostesses for water. Don’t be ridiculous, that wouldn’t work. There are no actual jokes - that’s mildly amusing banter, not actual comedy. It’s like your stories - usually vaguely amusing in the telling, but always without a proper punch line. You’d be just another Woody-Allen-without-jokes, vaguely amusing guy with insecurities. Now stop being late-night-ridiculous and go to sleep. Oh, look, here’s the breakfast croissant. A perfect opportunity to ask for water and put all this to rest. Can I have some water, please? Oh, they’re coming with the drinks trolley, great. Here it comes. Mmm, I’d like some orange juice. But I want water as well. Can I ask for both? No, don’t be greedy, just have orange. But I’m paying four hundred pounds to sit in this metal tube!

Somewhere along the line, I got a couple of hours’ sleep. But it was fitful, and interrupted by cycles of too-many-American-sitcoms pop-psych like that above. Then a funny thing happened - although, coming after all that, it doesn’t seem that funny at all. I looked out the window, and for once I didn’t see a blanket of clouds. Instead there was a dark mass of sea, extending out to the horizon and blending imperceptibly into the sky. The sun wasn’t rising ahead of us yet, but colour was beginning to appear outside the window, turning the sea that had seemed pitch black an hour or two ago a rich blue. And down on the surface, a tiny prick of light was shining. Around it, I could just make out the outline of a ocean liner. I realised that, all the way down there on the surface, aboard that tiny speck on the sea, a few hundred people were having all the same late-night fears. People just like, me, just like my surly American teenage neighbour, even just like the hostesses. Some sleeping, some dreaming, some just up worrying. With days or weeks, not hours, till their destination. And a wave of calm washed over me. I don’t know why - hey, maybe it was just the sugar rush from the orange juice - but I just had this incredibly strong sensation that we’re all the same - humanity, spread across the whole planet and constantly looking for new ways to traverse it, all just trying to get somewhere. The whole story of civilisation seemed to glow inside me, warming me. The ancient Chinese and their rockets, Galileo and his telescope, the tears of the designer of the Titanic. Working as individuals, as separate nations and cultures, we’d conquered the sea, the sky, and space, and now we are more connected than ever before. Surely, working together, there was no problem - climate change, poverty, conflict - we couldn’t overcome?

Not exactly philosophy, of course. And unlike a previous, similar revelation I once had - which I can think back to anytime I see a tree - it’s hard to base a life-philosophy on the fact that “from a distance, there is harmony” (and hey, someone tried). Indeed, it seems entirely logical that, if planes are designed to represent a sanitised and packaged mini-version of the world outside, then the impression of the world outside you get from the window is going to be sanitised and conflict-free too. Nevertheless, I remember that cruise ship very fondly. It got me through quite an odd night. Eventually, of course, we got home. And it was raining, and I got the train and the tube into London and went straight to work. So my good mood really should have evaporated. But that little ship kept me quite chirpy, all the way through till I collapsed into bed that night.