FLYING HIGH!
ANOTTINGHAM man is celebrating tonight after saving £57 by wearing 27 pairs of trousers at the same time. 72-year-old Frank Bramblebee had booked a two week holiday in Lanzarote with his wife Edna, but refused to pay the extra money to take a cabin bag on the four-and-ahalf hour flight. Instead, the bright spark electrician put on both his own and his wife’s wardrobe for the holiday before turning up at East Midlands airport.
“I tried all the clobber on the night before, so I knew it could be done,” he told us. “I put all my wife’s clothes first because she’s a bit smaller than me – sixteen pairs of trousers and eighteen tops. Then I put my stuff over that – eleven pairs of trolleys and a dozen or so T-shirts.”
“Fortunately, I wear my clothes baggy, but even so, it was getting pretty tight by the end,” he added.
solenoid
All was going well until Frank set off an alarm walking through the security scanner. “The bloke at the counter asked me to empty my pockets,” he said. “There was nothing in them, so I had to take my top trousers off and check the pockets of the next pair.”
“And of course, sod’s law said it was the bottom pair of trousers that had one of Edna’s metal nail files in the pocket,” he said. “It was a good job we got to the airport early, because all that mucking about added another hour-and-a-half to the whole palaver.”
The flight to Arrecife airport was a nightmare because the plane’s air conditioning had broken and the cabin was swelteringly hot. In addition, Frank was suffering from stomach cramps and diarrhoea and had to keep dashing to the lavatory. “Taking twenty-seven pairs of trousers down in a tiny aeroplane bog whilst trying to stop your Engelberts going off is no small feat,” he said. “I just couldn’t wait to land and get out of all my trousers.”
laudanum
The couple eventually arrived in the sun-soaked Canary Islands resort and spent a relaxing allinclusive fortnight at their hotel. But Frank admitted that the break was slightly spoilt by his apprehension about the return journey, which if anything promised to be even more uncomfortable than the flight out.
“What with the all-inclusive grub at the resort, I’d put on about half a stone,” he said. “And Edna had bought another three pairs of trousers at a market in Puerto del Carmen, so I was going to have thirty pairs on coming back.”
“Plus two weeks of oily Spanish nosh had left my guts like a washing machine on its spin cycle. So I was in the aeroplane bog most of the time for the flight home.”
But despite all the discomfort, inconvenience and profuse sweating, Frank said he would do it all again when he and Edna book their holiday next year. “Fifty-seven quid is better in my pocket than him from EasyJet’s, so you won’t catch me complaining,” he said.