If I sit on a bus and drink, I could get arrested. There are some parts of my city where if I drink in public, I get fined. I'm not even allowed to drink and ride my mountain bike. So why, please tell me, do they see it fit to serve alcohol on airplanes.
There just doesn't seem to be any logic behind it. Take a group of people, put them into what could become a stressful situation, cram them together and let them get drunk. What insight.
On this particular flight I was lucky enough to get the seat by the emergency exit. Lucky, I thought, as this meant I would be able to get some sleep as I had extra leg room to fit myself into. This seemed like such a good catch until the plane took off. On the ground it was quiet and serene and my leg room was my own, in the air the door was so noisy I couldn't sleep and my leg room was continually interrupted.
On the same flight as me, sitting in the aisle seats, there was a group of French people. Now I don't want this to turn into a French bashing post . . . but here we go anyway. The one particular French lady started drinking wine a full hour into a seven hour flight. She then continued to drink wine until she was suitable inebriated. This is, unsurprisingly, when she started making an ass of herself. As if singing was not enough, she started talking to the guy in front of me who could talk a few words of French. Busted, I though, he's gonna get stuck with the crazy lady. . . oh how fate laughed at me that day.
While I was gazing out the window she noticed me and thought she would come have a look too. As there was enough room to kneel in front of the door -barely- she did just that. Only, there wasn't quite enough space and her breasts ended up resting squarely on my knees. It wasn't a case of "oh oh, her breasts just brushed my knees" more "her breasts are fully, and with all their weight, on my knees. . . classy".
She then started to talk to me. In French. She would look out the window, look at me, talk for a while, I would do my best British tact of smiling politely while forming this post in my head. I understood a couple of words. There was Mag-Nif-Eek, and then later Be-You-Tee-Fall. I think she was talking about the clouds, I'm not entirely sure as I was far too distracted by the battering my knees were getting. I mean, there's no way in that turbulence free sky that she didn't realise her every movement and gesture was causing her breasts to knock, roll and rest on my knees. I was taken aback. I didn't know what to say. Luckily for me, my fake laugh and smile got me through the worst of it.
Then as we coming into landing, she was still being an ass and then she just got out of her seat and started dancing. A lady who was sat near her grabber her arm and very politely told her that she needed to be sat down as we were coming into land.
Boom.
All hell broke lose. There was a whole load of swearing going off. I don't know French, but you can tell when someone is swearing, and she was, repeatedly. This woman just wouldn't shut up, and then the best thing is, she was getting so mad that she wound herself up and just started getting madder. The poor woman that was trying to help her ended up getting a face full of abuse, then other customers started telling this woman to calm down and take her seat; so she started swearing with higher force and frequency, gotta love the French.
Security had to come over and see what the matter was, then when they grabber hold of her, she had a go at one of the people she was travelling with. He'd had a bit to drink as well and then both of them started on each other. There was another round of "who can be loudest" and then the Saudi security guy took her to another part of the plane. There was a little bit of clapping, people made sure the nice woman whom unfortunately started this whole thing off was ok, and we came into land.
This should have been the end of it. We had out bit of Air Rage, all would now be well. That should have been the end of it, yes; but guess what?
Lining up at Thai customs we were chatting and wondering what had become of her. It didn't take long before all our questions were answered as the now familiar sound of a drunk French woman swearing at the top of her voice rang through immigration. At this point I was at the gate getting my passport checked. The customs official stopped what he was doing for a while to watch her. A colleague of his called security. He looked at her, looked at me, stamped my passport and gave it me back. All through this he had been keeping an eye on her as she was in his queue, security were now approaching. As he gave me the all clear I nodded over to her, looked back at him and said "Have fun", for the first time since I saw him, he smiled. It was a smile that said "Ohhhhhh, I'm gonna".