The Talker

I should have known from the look he gave me that this was going to be trouble. If looks could make love, then I was being undressed in the candlelight by this stranger.

I’d smiled my hello as I sat down in the aisle seat. I wasn’t about to start a conversation with the man or anything; it was just a simple smile that I would give to any other fellow passenger. The empty middle seat was not wide enough to protect me from the barrage of attention that I would be subjected to for the next 100 minutes. On a plane I like to settle in and fall to sleep, but how can you sleep when someone is talking at you with the monotonous tone of the engines outside. In fact that was unfair on the engines, they at least changed pitch once or twice.

The safety announcements were followed by the roar of those engines and we were airborne and by now I was being shown photos of my travelling companion’s nephews, not even his own children but the children of another. Rich was 8 and Kyle just 5, yes he was a cutie. It was a short haul flight but it was beginning to feel long haul, as I got a complete run down of last night’s episode of Top Gear and then a monologue on the reasons why we were having a mild winter. But the real crème de la crème was the soliloquy on why we needed to look carefully at egg boxes to make sure that the eggs really were free range. He was so boring I felt like pulling my brain out of my head one synapse at a time. I was hoping that the tea and sandwich might shut my new ‘friend’ up, but no he just started talking about how airline food wasn’t what it used to be.

I was beginning to wonder how long I could hide in an aircraft toilet for, or whether I could put my headphones in mid sentence but I was far too British for that. I was even beginning to miss my adversary from my previous flight, the ‘silent, I’ll make you paranoid’ treatment was better than this relentless death by words. The seatbelt signs came on leading to a diatribe about how useless these belts were. I wished there was a button your lip sign. My head ached; I just wanted to yell shut up but again I was far too British.  We came down to earth with a bump. I stood up as soon as the seatbelt signs went off and nearly ran off the plane hoping that I could lose my new friend somewhere in the airport. The relative silence was bliss as I made my way to baggage reclaim. I was preying that my bag would be first out but I should be so Kylie Minogue. As I stood waiting for my bag I heard a familiar voice.

‘I always think next time I’ll take carry on, but I never do.’

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose and thanked my lucky stars as my bag poked its nose onto the conveyor belt.

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