"Who's Hydrating On The Plane?"

 I'm a seasoned international traveller, as you know, perhaps the last glowing ember of the Jet Set. So, when I tell you Stansted Airport is just the worst, you can believe me. 

It is howling chaos, a churning melee, a centre of excellence for screaming babies, babies who, frankly, have it pretty good. Nothing in their lives is that bad. Holidaymakers before they can walk. Picked up, put down, fed, bum wiped. You'd pay dear for that in a care home. The worst you have going on is growing new teeth? C'mon. Stop all the screaming, mate. Grow up. 

It was a bit livelier on the day

The airport is full of people just chancing their arms, arguing the toss about trying to get bags the size of a Smeg fridge on as "hand luggage" or, and this makes no sense to me at all, trying to smuggle enormous quantities of water onto the plane. It's water. Freely available water. I understand the importance of hydration, but does it have to be while you're going through airport security? You can drink water before, and you can drink water afterwards. You can buy all manner of drinks on the plane. But no, the only good water is the two litre bottle you smuggled onto the plane before you were caught. 

The English used to be good at following rules, at tugging forelocks, at cowering in front of authority, at queuing quietly in an orderly fashion. And I'm not saying that was necessarily good, but now we are a nation of libertarian pirates, to whom no rules apply, cheeky, rule-breaking scamps who are a little bit woo and a whole lotta wee. 

Except me. And Susan. We are eyes-down, meek, do-as-you're-tolds. We are from the old school, perhaps the last people who are. This used to be part of the national character, alongside deference to your betters, saying "Hi" instead of "Hey", and dying for three inches of dirt in Belgium. People like Susan and me made this country great. 

This is Susan more than me, if I'm honest. I have felt, all my life, like my mother before me, like a temporarily embarrassed space princess, and that I should be ferried from audience to audience in a sedan chair that smells of Sandalwood and Bjork's tears. But I'm also shy and awkward, and it's that constantly conflicting duality that has made me the astonishing success I am today. It also means I colour outside the edges, occasionally. 

But not Susan. Susan plays a straight bat. Not in a homophobic way. So when, forty five minutes before the flight is due to take off, we get our boarding gate number, a mood of nervous agitation falls over the table. I look down at my full beer. 

"It's forty five minutes." I say. 

A tight smile. 

"We have a bag in the hold. They can't take off without us."

A gentle tightening of the corners of her mouth the Mona Lisa would call "resting enigmatic face". But her hands start to knot, writhing over each other like five headed serpents. 

"It's just going to be half an hour of standing in a tunnel," I say to, what appears to be The Sphinx, but already I'm downing my pint in long gulps. I drink all of it in three minutes, and we're running across the airport as my body is trying to process the sudden ingestion of liquid that is just suddenly in me. Like Marc Almond in that urban myth that isn't true. 

We sit by the gate for thirty five minutes. There's nothing to do except look at the rows of miserable Northern Irish faces, and sneer at the speedy boarders. Speedy boarding - what a sweet grift. What spectacular bullshit. Pay extra to stand in a queue parallel to the queue everyone else is standing in, and where you can't sit down - the slack boarders have seats - and then be first into the tunnel where we all stand for another twenty minutes, no seats again, then you get to sit on the plane for slightly longer while everyone files in. Well worth it. Some people will do anything to feel like they've got something over somebody else. 

Anyway, the rest of the holiday was nice. But why does flying have to be quite this bad? A dehumanising exercise in fingering your waistband and x raying your shoes, a winding corridor of disgusting excess, leading to collapsed, sunburnt people pleading with their children to stop crying, and over-subscribed, over-priced pub food restaurants. 

Still, at least I don't work there. It must be like being a spit-dog in a Medieval kitchen. Watching the staff of The Perch working efficiently and with dignity in the face of everything they must see and hear every day was practically heroic. 

Now they can hydrate. They deserve it.