Sex on a plane

Watching sex can be embarrassing on a plane.

Being stupid, British Airways have decided to turn their Business Class into a social experiment.

They have "social seats" where people face each other. Great if your travelling with friends and family. Rubbish if your travelling by yourself and the man facing you chews with his mouth open...

I decided to avoid the pain by switching on a movie as soon as I sat down. People were still boarding when I decided to watch 'Bad Neighbours', a comedy that unfortunately for me, starts with a sex scene.

Your aeroplane neighbours making judgements about you watching a 'sex movie' is bad enough, but then the cabin crew decided to make an announcement, freezing the sex scene on the screen for 2 mins. Meanwhile 300+ people continued to board and walk past my seat and screen, first they looked at my TV screen, then they looked at the pervert looking at the screen, me.

Social seating. Not a good idea British Airways.

Big fat F for BA.

The Carb Pusher

My first meeting in the morning is at a Gentlemen's Club in Mayfair. No that's not a strip joint.

Unfortunately, I arrived 45 mins early for the meeting and non members can only enter with a member. Member being the operative word.

I opted to cross the street and have breakfast in a little French boulangerie. There was nothing French about it other than the name. The bread was made in a rustic bakery in Camden, and the staff were either Eastern European or Eastern European, and they all looked like they had graduated from Hooters (whatever that is).

Olga took my order, I decided to listen to my trainer for once and not order the pastries, but opted for smoke salmon and scrambled eggs. Being a temptress, Olga asked me what bread I would like with my breakfast and if I wanted it toasted or not.

She must have been trained in food ordering ninja double speak, she didn't ask if I wanted bread or not. She was good, a natural bread saleswoman / pusher. It was at this point myself control should have kicked in, and I should have said, "I know what your trying to do bitch, load me up with carbs, but I am not having it."

Instead I found myself asked for granary toast, in the vain hope that she would be wowed with my healthy option choice. I spent the next 20 mins crunching through over cooked, super thin toast, at first I thought all the crunching noise was confined to my mouth, but the occasional turned head from across the restaurant told me otherwise. There is toast, and then there is dry crackers.

Next time I will just become a member of the club, it will be healthier.

The Useless Samaritan

Driving home in London, way after midnight, I passed what looked like two bundles of clothes of the side of the road.

Something didn't seem quiet right, so I pulled over, reversed the 50m or so and got out of the car.

The two bundles of clothes were as I has suspected two people, a man and a woman, both unconscious, both sprawled out on the ground, a good metre or so away from the road itself. Both lying on the ground in unnatural positions.

My first thought was that they had both been knocked over by a car, and being an emergency first aider, I immediately went into 'first aide mode'. I looked at both bodies trying to visually decide which one of them had the more life threatening injuries.

The man had his leg bent under him, his arm was wall over the place, so I decided to walk over to him first.

I bent over his body and asked if everything was OK. No response. I asked again. No response. I shouted this time, leaned over and pinched his ear lobe.

This time, the man in a very croaky, weak voice asked me if I was a policeman. I said I was not. He then turned his head towards me and with as much venom as he could, told me in now clearly drunken and slurry way to, 'FUCK OFF THEN.'

I left them both where they were to sleep it off.

Next time I better see blood before I stop.

Bloomberg City Airport

London City Airport used to be a really quaint airport. You could get from check-in to the plan in less than 10 mins. Pre-UBL and his scarywallahs if you were late, you could throw your bags over the fence, jump over and run to the plane and no one would bat an eye lid.

I think if I tried that now I would be riddled with machine gun bullets and fed to the police dogs. Actually I know that's what would happen because my neighbour (who hates me), runs the Police here.

UBL and his scarywallahs meant the airport had security, which delayed getting to the plane by 30 seconds... if you wore a suit and had shiny shoes you were normally waved through.

All these years London City Airport was the unloved child, as close as it was to Canary Wharf it seems Tarquin the investment banker preferred flying from Heathrow, as it was close to his $1.5m Chelsea studio apartment. Besides Tarquin loved taking risk with the banks money, but there was NO WAY he was going to get on a plane with propellers!

Then it all changed. The advent of small, quiet jets. DLR trains from Canary Wharf, a Nero Coffee shop, and worst of all the 2007-2017 Financial Crisis.

Budgets were cut, Tarquin could no longer have the chauffeur car from Chelsea to Heathrow and had to use a mini cab instead or worse the train. He could no longer fly business class unless his boss was with him, and he was even expected to work the few hours before his flight. No more taking it easy and treating himself to a 'travelling day'.

The end result is that the airport that serviced me and 50,000 thrill seekers a year, now services millions of people. Just to make it worse, to entertain and make the new users feel at home, gone are the 1970's seating, the feel or a private airport terminal. In comes the clinical metrosexual Bloomberg office look, together with Bloomberg terminals all over the place and pretty pastel colours and seats that look great, but leave you with a spine looking like St. Pauls Cathedral.

Damn Lehmans!

Hammer the Hammers

Being born an official Cockney means once in a while you have to slum it and take two buses to Green Street so you can watch the Hammers - West Ham United.‎

The last time I went to watch West Ham vs. Southampton, was last season. Then, behind me sat a 'lady' drinking a pint of beer from a plastic cup. Whenever West Ham scored, she forgot she had a pint in her hand, cheered, and I got a dolop of her beer on my head. Unfortunately West Ham won 4-1.

I was there again today to watch West Ham vs. Southampton, luckily my brothers season tickets have a much better view but a much more hostile crowd.

Pre-1990's the only non-white's that went to West Ham were the cleaners of the executive offices. These days a non-white fan manages to get away being there, but only because the hooligans have been either driven away / underground, they have become PC themselves, or have found worse things to hate.

Amongst the things a modern day West Ham fan hates is their own team and manager. The team wears Claret and Blue, but most of the blue comes from the fans.

Shouts from the terraces today:
I am going to rip your head off and sh;t in your neck!
F@ck your wife not the team Sam!
W@nker, w@nker, w@nker!... at an injured player
You useless fat c@nt.. At a player that missed a goal

….Those were all from West Ham ‘fans' to either their own players or their own manager.

The only time anyone relaxed and laughed was when a rather portly steward walked in front of the stand, and 500 people started chanting, "You fat bastard! You fat bastard! You fat bastard!"

He took it with humour and waved at the stand. I however sank further in my seat and vowed to leave the stadium last… Thank goodness for Cricket.

This is my last taxi story, at least until next time. I promise.

Having been picked up from Gatwick Airport my driver discovered he had a flat and needed to change the tyre. We pulled over to the side into the hard shoulder / safety lane. The driver asked me to deploy the warning triangle 50m before the vehicle, while he proceeded to change the tyre.

I have no idea where he got the warning triangle from, but it was more akin to a Rubics Snake than a quick snap, shut and deploy model.

Minutes later, I was still frowning and trying to work out how to make it into a triangle, when the driver shouted, "ah, good. You saw I was finished and have already taken down the triangle."

Me. "That was fast! Yes, yes. Where did you get this warning triangle? It's really good."

The longest 3.5 hour flight in history.

Seats to London from Istanbul during the last week of August, (the week before the start of the school term) are like gold dust. I booked the very last available seat and that explained the cost of my super expensive, super economy seat on Turkish Airlines.

My only luxury was managing to pre-book an aisle seat on my phone internet. If you've tried doing that with a Blackberry screen you know how impossible a task it is. Every bump in the road had me sitting all over the planes map.

My valuable aisle seat, was next to a new mother with a sleeping three month old baby.

The mother was quiet helpless / useless. She didn't know how to use a seat belt, let alone a baby belt and I had to help with both. All of which was fine.

Not so fine, came an hour into the flight. The baby CLEARLY needed a nappy change.

The lady asked if she could use my tray table.

I don't know how it happened, I think my Spidey Senses may have been dulled from the previous nights Raki challenges, so slightly confused and compliant I moved my things off my table.

She put her own tray table down, put a blanket over both my and her tray table, and then lay the baby down and proceeded to change the baby's nappy in front of me.

The Lord is merciful, I didn't get the toxic end.

To add insult to injury, the baby seemed to find my face particularly amusing and continually laughed and smiled whenever it looked at me. Later in the flight when the baby became ratty, the mother kept pointing to my face hoping the baby would be cheered up.

Unfortunately it worked.

By the end of the flight I had a queue of mothers bringing their sobbing, snivelling toddlers to be cheered up by looking at me. Everyone left the flight happy except me, and the cleaner who will find an unbagged nappy under seat 7B.

Poor Sabiha Gökçen Airport

I managed to get the last seat, on one the last planes at the end of school holidays rush. The last seat brings me to Sabiha Gökçen Airport for the first time in 6 years.

How to ruin a good airport.... Try and make it into a shopping mall to sell departing passengers as much toot as possible.

The quaintness of Sabiha Gökçen Airport was always that you could go from the check-in desk to the aeroplane in less than 100 steps. Alas no longer.


If Ataturk Airport is Heathrow, then Sabiha Gökçen has become Gatwick. Not just Gatwick but Gatwick South Terminal.

Both terminals have a cheap, and less than cheerful holiday maker feel about them. Both are more in the countryside than in the city. And that brings different problems.

‎It looks like Sabiha Gökçen bus all their staff from one village‎ and everyone in the village is related.

The children that speak English well enough work in Gözen Security, those not so well work in fast food, Dad's and uncles are Policemen, Mum's and aunties are in baggage security.‎ Anyone else wears white and are one of those Ghost cleaners that most people don't notice.

I hope the government is going to use a different blue print for the grand and ecologically disastrous plan for a world class third airport. I doubt it though.

Fertile recuriting grounds for ISIS / IS

Back in Istanbul for a day trip. (No truth to the rumour that my tan needed topping up).

Getting out of the airport, Lady Luck or at least a lady taxi driver was waiting for me. Sexist pig that I seemed to be, I automatically assumed that I was in safer hands. Alas poor Yorick.

In the first 5 mins, not only did she try to take me the long way to my destination, but she then tried to aggressively drive another driver off the road who had dared to cut in front of her... All while managing to wheel spin the car in 3rd gear.

It took all my manly self control not to flinch in front of her and slam hard on the imaginary brake on the passenger side of the car.

I am assuming she was half French, as only a sailor from Marseille has the ability to swear as vitriolically at other drivers or anyone that would look in her direction as she did.

It seems no matter which country they are from, what religion, creed or sex they are, all cab drivers are potential recruits for ISIL/ISIS/IS.