Flight lines...

It all started out so predictably.

Waiting around for the boarding announcement.

Queueing for boarding by rows.






Showing identity and smartphone with flash-code.

Falling over my sodding suitcase on wheels.

At last, I was walking down the ramp towards the stationary Airbus 320 destination Corsica.

On entering the plane, it was apparent that this was no ordinary flight.

Indeed, this was a very particular flight.

I did notice that the air hostesses and stewards were peculiarly attired.

Regulation uniform had been hidden beneath crudely drawn, hurriedly personalised t shirts.

While their greeting on board was pretty customary, it was clear that their minds just weren't  on the job.

Something bigger than uniform, function and role was visibly bursting out - attachment, nostalgia, thrill, warmth, every day  human emotion.

On sitting down in our under-sized seats, on attaching our seatbelts we were introduced into a pop-up theatre of humanity.

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this flight is a very special occasion for our friend and colleague Poppy (we shall call her Poppy...in remembrance)...after 20 years of loyal service she is giving up her job as an air hostess to change her life."

At the end of the announcement quasi-spontaneous (rather forced) applause broke out around the aircraft.

"Hurrah for Poppy."

The air-safety instructions delivered mechanically beneath a silly t shirt, gaudy head-antenna and glitter were an event too exceptional for me not to note.

I took a photo of the steward's performance.

The steward in the steward immediately came towards me, stood over me and demanded that I delete the offending photo.

"Taking photos is against the rules." he said sternly.

I couldn't not agree with him on a number of levels.

First: I was unable to ask permission before hand. He could quite rightly find that a rude imposition.

Second: I was treating him as an object. (actually it was the strange juxtaposition of discourses which fascinated me).

Third: He had no means of knowing whether I might, not only steal his image, but spread it on social media.

Fourth: The celebration for Poppy, the applause, the silly t shirts may not have been officially sanctionned. Any photo of their transgression might have resulted in punnishment for the perpetrators of the celebrations for Poppy's farewell flight.

I deleted the offending photo...sheepishly.

What I didn't mention to the steward was that I hadn't taken one photo....I had taken two.

During the flight, I felt a moral dilemna: I wondered whether I should confess to the man, ask forgiveness (again) and explain what I wanted to do with the photo, ask for assent, or delete it before his eyes, thank him, and wish him well.

There was at no moment any untransactional dialogue between him and I.

During the flight, it was all steward-speak:

"Would you like savoury or sweet snack?"

"No we don't have any tonic water."

"Thank you."

"Bye bye."

He was much too taken up with his "hen-flight" celebrations to be bothered to speak to me when I stepped off the plane.

I decided to keep the photo.

On leaving the plane, there were the air-crew, champagne in hand,  taking selfies of each other in their glitter glasses, and t shirts with red hearts on them.

Was the fancy dress for Poppy or for the passengers?

I struggle to untie the ethics.

• As passengers, we had no choice but to accept the Poppy theatre.

• As passengers, we were a captive audience to the aircrew's celebration.

• As passengers, we were expected to participate more as a back-drop - as  extras to their party, than invitees.

We were being reduced to the role of audience on reality TV.

On arriving the airport, I went to seek a means of escape.

My connecting flight being in a few hours, I walked up and down trailing my baggage, looking for a bus, taxi, pavement (sidewalk).

I was confronted by transport desert.

Et merde.

I resigned myself to a long stay in the airport.

No transport, rubbish souvenir shop, low battery.

It's extraordinary how electric sockets become oasis in transport desert.

I found the shortest charging cable known to modern man or woman or wilerbeast in a combination safe on a wall.

Who invented that beauty?

BRAVO MATE! (WTF?)

No movable chairs. None. Only fixed chairs. Only fixed metal uncomfortable chairs.

A woman helpfully suggested that I might leave my phone in the safe to charge.

She didn't understand my plight.

I wanted to use the bloody phone to release my soul purgatory not lock it up in a box.

I sat uncomfortably, at an angle on my suitcase, my back suffering, my head throbbing at their fucking security messages which were every ten minutes.

"Your suitcase will be taken away and destroyed if left unattended."

I couldn't leave the suitcase unattended cos it was the thing I was sitting on.

As the time ticked by the onslaught of their loudspeakers drove me progressively madder.

Thank God for "Hyperspektiv" app which is a means of expressing dynamic paranoia like no other.

Hyperspektiv, PicPlayPost,  iMovie,  hours of sitting in alienating airport, bored, Audiocopy, Dynamite...BOOM!!!!!

I noted today in the Guardian that the prisoners of Guantanamo have an art exhibition going on in New York.

The article was entitled:

"I CAN GET MY SOUL OUT OF PRISON"

Well fuck yes.

Mapping. Les maux des mots. point x

Act 3.

Road rage

It was that bloody open web ideologist (#blideo) Steve Wheeler who got me going. 

He stole a video I posted on Youtube a few years back.

http://youtu.be/hIEIU9S30l8

Others of his ideological bent took up on this #blideo blogging challenge:  

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/blideo-new-blogging-challenge.html

When I saw the pieces posted by some David Hopkins guy here 

http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/hang-on-a-minute-lads-ive-got-a-great-idea-blideo/ 

and a Sue Beckingham here 

http://www.suebeckingham.com/2015/08/building-confidence-takes-time-learning.html 

I had a shock, I can tell you!

That was my video of a wildlife security breach they were going on about. 

Well folks, here's the really story of that elk video: 

I was hanging around in my Fence Security truck muttering "bloody herds".

I was filming that video for ages while I waited to see if the fence would withstand a single elk attack.

Nope, not even a single elk on its own was stopped!

Time-travel a few years later...there was my elk video.

Ha ha bloody ha!

Those bloggers were going on about elk emancipation, I thought to myself: 

"Have they no thought for guys like us?"

I have been personally responsible for interstate highway security for the past 15 years.  

Each year well-built American passengers cars are destroyed by invasive wildlife. 

Talk of wildlife protection! 

It's highway maintenance guys like us who need protecting!

Now even puny elk-calves are jumping through our VLE (very large elk) fences. 

Fence maintenance is becoming impossible. 

The trucks and the four by fours won't be  able to tell the highway from the wild. 

There'll be bloody transport chaos!!

Just let them all wander all over the place. 

They'll see! 

They'll regret our VLE's. 

I'm retiring to wander the wild as a bloody bounty hunting cowboy. 

Adios pardners. 

PS. In the wilds elk and hikers and drivers get mauled by mountain lion. 

Space to think...

Space to think, vital space, head space.

This is it, they can't damn this flow. The English course, an Indian summer, there we were, sitting on the grass, the concrete walls of the institution, vaguely irrelevant. It was impossible to feel anything other than free. The students were standing, others walking, some lounging, chatting, reflecting on their personal projects.

I am sitting on a sofa at home, drinking coffee, writing this. Is this my work? Not sure what it is, but it appears necessary.

Nursery
Yesterday I went to pick up my daughter at the creche. I looked around at the play space. Lovely bright colours, hand painting on the walls, boxes full of toys, little kids moving freely, busily building their real, imaginary worlds.

Primary
I rushed off this evening to the parent teacher meeting at my son's school. I sat facing uncomfortably front at an adult designed child-sized desk. I gazed anxiously at the lists of homework, the shelved exercise books and the high set windows.  Outside, the kids were kneeling on the playground tarmac, playing with their Bayblades.

Boarding
I got my finger stuck in a metallic chair once. The more that I struggled, the more that it swelled up and made its release unlikely. It was in a German class with the man who would successfully convince me that German was not for me. I remember nothing more about his class.

With a lot of tugging, a sizeable pat of butter and no little pain, I was freed. From that day on, I was the undesirable element.

One afternoon, to my considerable pleasure, he excluded me from his class.  I went off to my study and ate toast. Perhaps the best piece of toast I ever remember eating.

Dormitory, library, lavatory.
Sleeping in a room with thirteen co-detainees left little space for privacy. Showering was communal, baths shared, adolescent angst barely hid. Escape was a common subject of discussion at my school. Tales were told of the three boys who managed to get as far as Preston. We only got as far as Blackpool ice-rink. We bribed the monitors.  I didn't like ice-skating, I couldn't care less.

Peace, on week days, was a lavatory cubicle.  Sundays,  I squatted a corner of the library behind the magazine rack. In times of stress, I continue to find comfort in plastic bound glossies and anonymous silence.

Four walls and a door
Let's just close the door, so nobody can hear what I have to say.

Why do we insist on sitting people down on chairs to learn? How much do other people's spaces condition our behaviour? Would we want other people to choose our furniture for us?  Why do prisons and some schools have high-set windows? What has learning got to do with facing front? Aren't we missing something if we only look in one direction? What is it about libraries and comfort? Should the bell at the end of the school day be a release?

Banksy mural 
Photo  Certains droits réservés par walker cleavelands