Celia Walden can teach you to fly

What happened next Time travel with Doctor Who

Once I’m aboard a plane, nothing can pique my interest. In fact, it’s the only place on earth where I feel flirting is wrong

Idon’t know how many times I’ve put my belt in a tray at Heathrow, but it’s enough for me to have lost all resentment and taken on, instead, an attitude of mute surrender. Arms outstretched, head bowed, I’ll hand over my vial-filled Ziploc bags and let the nice ladies pat me down – and, on the occasions when it has been asked of me, even drink my own breast milk.

I have little patience for the corduroy-clad man who wants me to share in his middle-class outrage when – having been told repeatedly, robotically, ‘Belts and shoes need to be removed’ – he finds to his amazement that belts and shoes need to be removed. I have no patience with the boisterous young businessmen making ‘Hope you hid the Semtex’ jokes or the scatty mother who – desperate to find the bottle/wipes/litre of Calpol there’s no way in hell they’ll let her take on board – has spread the contents of her suitcases out on the floor. Like shoppers who only start fumbling for their wallets once the supermarket cashier reads out a figure, this moment can’t have come as a complete surprise, can it? Basically, I have no patience for bad travellers.

If you think there’s a faint whiff of superiority about all this, let me reassure you: I don’t just think I’m a good traveller. After six years of boarding a plane every six-to-eight weeks, I’m fairly certain I’m the best. We’re talking Olympic Gold-standard in the all-important trifecta: prior planning, speed of execution and discretion – something bad travellers fail to understand is a basic requirement. You see, I don’t care if you’re en route to your daughter’s birth (don’t show me the scan, don’t tell me the twins’ names, and don’t expect me to raise a glass of substandard merlot to Sidney’s ‘new family’). I don’t care if you’ve just left your wife of 15 years for a transgender tae kwon do instructor who bears a freakish resemblance to Keanu Reeves (and who will be waiting in LA). I don’t care if the toddler you’re bouncing on your knee is so cute he looks like he was dreamt up by the Disney merchandising department (I don’t find my own child cute on long-haul flights, let alone anyone else’s). And I don’t care if you, my neighbour, are the spit of Ryan Gosling and entertaining unholy thoughts about me. Once I’m aboard a plane, nothing can pique my interest. In fact, it’s the only place on earth where I feel flirting is wrong. Why would you want to flirt in a large, airless canister that smells of human compost?

Being a good traveller is all about perception. This is no adventure; this is an endurance test. So from the second you begin making your way to the airport, you’re in a video game with a single aim: getting from A to B. Your path will be fraught with obstacles and setbacks. While it may be tempting to garner moral support from those around you, only the most dehumanised – the travel-bots who, like me, plug in and tune out from the moment they board – can hope to survive.