17th December 2006
I’ve just got back from a trip to Turkey where The Trouble and I went for a weekend courtesy of a company called Parador Properties. The purpose of the visit was to look at flats with a view to buying one if we saw something we liked at the right price. We saw something we liked and bought. Not without a few trials and tribulations of course. The first trial, or maybe it was a tribulation, I’ve always had difficulty knowing which is which, happened at Manchester Airport prior to boarding the plane.The information on the departure board reference our flight had just changed from ‘Proceed to Gate 44’ to ‘Now Boarding’. The Trouble, perfectly on cue, now decided she wanted to go to the lavatory. I pointed out to her that we had been sat in the departure lounge for the past forty five minutes and asked her why she hadn’t gone then. She said she didn’t want to go then. This didn’t come as news to me, the self same thing has happened scores of times before, in fact every time we fly somewhere. Apparently there is some mechanism in her system that takes her directly from a state of not wanting to go to the lavatory to a state of wanting to go to the lavatory in an instant, and at the precise moment the departure indicator information changes from ‘Proceed to Gate 44 or whatever’ to ‘Now Boarding’. It’s the same mechanism that causes her to want to go to the lavatory every time we are going out together and immediately after she’s just said ‘Right, off we go then’ or something similar, and acting in good faith I’ve gone to the front door and opened in readiness for our departure.
Knowing I was wasting my time but asking her all the same, just to let her know I was annoyed with her, I said: “Why don’t you go when you get on the plane?â€
I was well aware of the futility of this enquiry because to my certain knowledge The Trouble, despite being an inveterate traveller who must have racked up more air miles than Prince Andrew, has in all her years of air travel yet to see the inside of an airplane lavatory. They are a complete mystery to her. For all she knows orgies could be taking place in them, although she probably suspects this isn’t the case otherwise I’d be visiting them a lot more than I do.
One of her many flights was to Australia, first stop Singapore. She must be the only person in the world to have travelled from Manchester to Singapore without having a pee. To make sure that she wouldn’t have to pee while on the airplane she had a pee before getting on board – when the departure indicator changed from ‘Wait in Lounge’ to ‘Proceed to Gate 37’ – and had nothing at all to drink during the entire journey.
I don’t know why she refuses to use the onboard toilet facilities; I’ve asked her but all I get for my pains is a look of wonder that anyone should risk using an airplane lavatory. Maybe because she has visions of falling through the bottom of the W.C. from a height of 35,000 feet. Suggestions on a postcard or in the Comments sections please.
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