17th September, 2006

BACK SEAT DRIVERS

I’ve had to spend a fair bit of time travelling during the past week, and it gave me a lot of time to be pondering on the big questions, especially the ones to do with travelling. For instance, why is it that when you’re driving and look in your rear-view mirror, and there’s a huge van riding on your bumper, it’s nearly always white? Or why is it, that you can be sitting at a traffic light for a moment, or what seems an eternity, but as soon as you try to get something out of the glove compartment the lights will change? Or why is it that no matter how carefully you readjust the driver’s seat after someone else has been in it, it will always slide forward the first time you brake?

It was particularly the latter question that came to mind this week, oddly enough, while I was boarding the plane coming back from Rome. I knew something was amiss when half way through the boarding procedure everything seemed to suddenly grind to a halt. I had got on board the bus which was to bring us from the terminal to the plane. One or two buses had already left, but there were still a lot of people to be transported. But suddenly there was nobody coming out of the terminal. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed and nothing happened – we were left standing there. I checked my boarding pass again to see the time of departure, which had now passed, and it was then for the first time that I noticed ‘CIA’ in capital letters on my stub.

Had I got caught up in some international espionage? Surely not – it’s not the sort of thing that those involved in it advertise! It was with relief that I realised that opposite the CIA was printed BVA – of course, I was going from Ciampino to Beauvais. Eventually things start moving again, and we get driven out to the plane. And there I met a sight that’s never designed to cheer me up as I board a plane – two fellows with a box full of spanners, trying to look like they know what they’re doing. In fairness, they did actually, because they had the pilot’s seat firmly back in place about twenty minutes later. Which was just as well, as I didn’t fancy the idea of the pilot, seat and all, passing me on his was down to the back door on take-off!