THE SWEATY DUMMY IN SEAT 31F
Gustave Flaubert said that travel makes one modest, because you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. Whatever, man. I just needed to disembark from a connecting flight from Warsaw to Frankfurt because, according to my boarding pass, my Frankfurtto-Cape Town flight was already boarding. I ran. I thundered through the thronged terminal with desperate optimism. I jinked around portly, knock-kneed families of five pushing their trolleys abreast, each loaded with the Library of Congress. I muttered breathless apologies to the queue at passport control and then ran again. But it’s hard to sprint when you’re in less-thanoptimum shape and lugging a backpack with laptop, a Martin Cruz Smith novel and a bottle of duty-free Zubrówka Bison Grass vodka.
Then I hit the main concourse at Gate Z1 and headed for Gate GZ64. I wheezily hummed the Chariots of Fire theme for morale. Still, I chugged along the travelators, and implored the slower-moving folk to keep right. I perspired past a tall, leisurely strolling man, whom I was convinced had raised a bemused eyebrow, as though I was trying to get to my flight while wearing a propeller-hat and orange Crocs.
Eventually I could see my boarding-gate. My flight had not only not yet boarded, but hadn’t even begun to do so. I joined the queue, flushed, sweaty, winded and increasingly shamefaced as, jointly and severally, all the folk I’d pushed past arrived.
Presently the tall man arrived too, and coolly sized up sweaty and possibly smelly me. He was an angular, avuncular, twinkly-crinkly, Robert Redford-type, but with his own hair, carefully tousled, like a Caesar who does effortless half-marathons on the Appian Way rather than invading Gaul or feeding Christians to lions.
We waited, my sweat pooling, face still flushed. Caesar Silver Fox was relaxed and tanned, but from leisure rather than manual labour: skiing in Lech Zürs and Megève, no doubt. In hindsight I possibly read too much into his amused interest in my whiffy mortification, while I sweated like a one-legged sheep at shearing time.
At length we boarded. I was sure I’d snagged an over-wing window seat, with extra legroom: 31F, here we come.
So, when I saw Mr Holidays On The Slopes in my seat, I was ready to draw myself up to my full height and claim my vast legroom by the window. I’d be gimlet of eye and stern of voice: Excuse me, Good Sir, I believe you’re in my seat, the one rated by Seat Guru as one of the best in economy class. And if you trifle with me, Herr Off-Piste, I will be piste-off.
Then, a still, small voice: this was a widebody aircraft rather than the 737s that I’m more used to. So, seat F wasn’t by the window, it was in middle row.
Embarrassment averted, I settled into seat F, also with ample legroom, albeit in front of a bulkhead. Two women and a small child arrived and the grown-ups discreetly pointed out that I was in the little one’s seat, and that mine was in the row behind. I gathered up my novel and the shards of my dignity and moved my glowing ears to the correct seat while Mr Casually Expensive looked on and refrained from rolling his eyes at the flustered bumpkin.
My phone gleefully showed SMSs from the airline telling me the flight had been delayed. I spotted the child’s dummy under her seat and returned it, feeling as virtuous as if I’d rescued a basket of kittens from a house fire. Then I sat behind my novel, just as small as Mr Flaubert had said I’d be.
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