Flying With The Cattle

After a nice relaxing holiday, I hobbled to the airport to board a flight back to NZ. The hobbling was of course caused by a combination of alcohol, sand burn, rope burn from the hammock, groin strain and a very bad case of mosquito bites. Contractually the holiday ended when Mr X departed the Island two days earlier so therefore I can tell this story without breaching it....

So I check in Air New Zealand at 2.55am and ask for an upgrade to business class. On the basis of course that I am flying from a small holiday Island and therefore could possibly be sitting next to a better quality of person. One who showers would be sufficient. Standards at this stage are not excessive.

So Cactus uses an inordinate amount of charm and manages for only $200 extra to get upgraded.

There is a catch however, as there always is. I sit on the aisle and a woman asks me in a gruff voice to move. Holy fuck this woman is the size of 2 of me. She is in the 120kg + category, in other words, would clock the airport baggage scales. I explain the boarding pass is in fact an allocation of seating and not a general seating guide but she wants the aisle. Kindly I tell her that I have been allocated the aisle as I requested it and she should get her fat arse to the window immediately. It was after all 3.55am and yep, you guessed it, I had taxied straight from the local pub, not my hotel bed.

So (lets call her Mrs Tent) sits down at the window and takes off her jandals, exposing the fattest feet I have ever seen in my life. She places her bag etc.. on the middle unoccupied seat and continues to let rip the most horrid fart I have ever smelt.

Everything is orderly until the seatbelt sign comes off and Mrs Tent throws her huge trunks around and up on the spare seat. This is an act of agile yogatic proportions for a woman this fat. The tent she wears as a dress is so large, but so inadequate to cover knickers flying out at the audience in the same way Austin Powers Fat Bastard exposes himself in film.

More smells are omitted. I was too drunk to notice whether it was now her feet, that were undelicately placed right up to the line of my seat, over the spare seat, or more flatulence. I was too sober to not smell the rortation of the senses.

Action was required. So Cactus too joined in and tried to manoeuver her feet on to the spare feet. Gentle kicking of these Kauri tree trunks resulted. Mrs Tent then yelled at the top of her voice "Excuse me what do you think you are doing" in the tones that only a morbidly obese woman in their 40's with overgrown earlobes and bad personal hygiene could. No feeling sorry for this one, she was one mean stroppy bitch.

To which I gently replied in more plain English that I was exerting my joint possessory right to the spare seat. Obviously this was not clear enough to this fat lump of lard and so a simple explanation "So you have purchased this seat for yourself too then?". She replied as only the uneducated masses could that she needed the spare seat because the seat she had was too small.

By then Australian tourists had joined in the audience and Cactus of course could not help playing to the gallery by explaining that it was only fair that Mrs Tent had the whole of the spare seat to put her feet on and throw half her arse on to because she had possibly not actually seen her toes for several years.

Mrs Tent was then incensed enough to grab the "spare" pillow and whack me over the shoulder with it. Such a common assault would normally be met with equal and opposite reaction. But Mrs Tent was 120kgs+.

The air hostess had by this time arrived on the scene and instead of warning Mrs Tent for this most common of assaults in the air on another passenger, they moved Mrs Tent. This took more than several minutes. Only there were no more seats and she insisted she was not going to sit in economy. This was now a game and so I insisted I was not moving and no one offered to move seats to have to sit with Mrs Tent in order to arrange seating sufficiently. By then she had let several more farts into the cabin. Big drop bomb stinkers. She had also developed a whopping sort of cough that she refused to cover her mouth for when she expelled all those years of bad health with.

The mexican standoff was resolved by Mrs Tent being allocated not one but TWO cabin crew seats. The cabin crew sat with me for landing.

See business class really is a waste of money. Such entertainment can be found in economy on a daily basis. I will be taking some cough/cold pills tonight however in precaution. Last thing I want is Big Bird flu.