Delusions of Grandeur.

I am the sort of person that always ends up in the very last seat on an airplane, squashed in by the last window, next to the loos.

Having had a fascinating, turbulent, revelatory but nevertheless rather trying year I decided I deserved a treat and booked myself Club class for my BA flight to Sweden to see my mother and my stepfather. (well, it was a special offer...)

My fellow travellers were mostly well groomed women with expensive blonde hair and handsome husbands with the sort of golden glow that settles on people who have spent a critical mass of hours in the sunshine of Marbella or Barbados. They had Louis Vuitton luggage or similar and I was grateful that I had decided to check in my little trolley bag, which would otherwise have exposed me as the impostor and fraud I undoubtedly am. It was bought in a bargain stall on the Mile end Road and has since been impregnated with axel grease, baby vomit and chicken shit during innumerable journeys on the local bus between Bamako and Djenne.

There was also a young black man in the seat in front of me. He pulled his hood down and slept all the way through with an insouciance that impressed me. In my excitement I had to restrain myself from shaking him awake. I mean, did he not realize that there was on-tap champagne to be had? I then decided he was probably some hip hop star whose flights were always taken Club class. 

Our air steward had been studying Anthony Hopkins in ‘Remains of the Day’ and had perfected his respectful, dignified and servile manner: “Yes, Madam, Certainly Sir, May I suggest, Sir...” to which he had added a touch of conspiratorial jolliness, with some winking thrown in: “Oh go on Madam, why not have another glass of Champagne, it is Christmas after all!”

And of course I had another glass of Champagne. And lapped it all up shamelessly. 

I  mean, I’ll be down by the loos again, undoubtedly, for my next long haul flight to Mali in March...