Three useful and amusing tips to improve the quality of your
time in the air chair.
Tip #1: The ‘pillow’
That cushion on your seat, the one designed to perfectly fit
and fall through the gap between the seats, or the gap between the seat and the
body of the plane. The one that couldn’t give your neck any useful support
unless it were twice as thick and substantial, less spongy.
Has that happened to you: it falls through the gap? A
quandary – do you bother to ask the person in the seat behind to return it, or would
you feel too petty. If you do ask, chances are the passenger behind will deny any
knowledge of ‘your’ cushion. Because the very same thing happened with ‘their’
cushion, and they’re now holding ‘yours’ in lieu of ‘theirs’. And a surplus
cushion languishes, now two, now more, rows back.
Well here’s a thought:
That ‘blanket’ sealed in a sticky plastic bag, the one
folded to match the proportions of the cushion, perhaps to simplify storage
and distribution. The blanket you’re unlikely to want or use.
Combine these two annoying travel trinkets, cushion and
blanket, into a single serviceable unit: insert the blanket neatly into the
pillowcase.
Benefits:
- The larger cushion no longer slips through the
gaps
- Its augmented substance will
better support your head or neck
- The cushion will better form around
uncomfortable hard edges and over cavities. The blanket backing makes for a
harder base, while the cushion between it and head evens out and softens the protrusions.
- One or two fewer things underfoot.
Tip #2: The 'spoon'
You’re passed a tray strewn with
plastic food containers. Somewhere midst the containers is a sealed plastic
sleeve with ‘cutlery’ – plastic knife, fork, spoon and teaspoon, toothpick,
tiny salt and pepper, and a paper napkin. Open the sleeve and tip the contents among
the containers, then pick out the bits you want.
No, don’t do that! Just locate
the spoon, push its handle through the end of the sleeve, and withdraw it and
it alone (though you might want the napkin as well, if there’s no non-sleeved
napkin).
The spoon is all you
need to eat the food the airline provides. You don’t even need teeth. Eating
with knife and fork is impractical. (Worse, the person sitting next to you
eating with knife and fork, jabbing an elbow at your face with every mouthful.)
If you need to clean the spoon between containers, stick it in your mouth, where everything else on the spoon ended up (you hope).
Keeping utensils in the sleeve prevents
their inadvertently flipping something onto yourself, your neighbour, or the
floor. The floor, tantalisingly close, yet beyond the reach of searching stumbling
fingers while the tray-table remains ‘locked in the downright position’.
Tip #3: The ‘bottle’
The wine on planes comes in
little plastic ‘bottles’, miniatures of a regular wine bottle.
This wine should be drunk
straight from the ‘bottle’.
Does it taste better consumed from
a crinkly plastic cup better suited to the dentist’s rinse and spit?
With the lid screwed down between
sips, relax, safe from the occasional bump in the air or on the chair, the
occasional uncoordinated misplaced limb or arm movement. (Or even the
occasional missile, inadvertently catapulted by the dispensed
contents of a cutlery sleeve.) Shirt stains at immigration, never again.
With the lid screwed on, safely
stow the bottle (and any subsequent bottles) in the seat pocket in front, with
tray table restored upright and tray and leftovers long gone. Party on!
Enjoy catching the eye of
disbelieving passengers as you surreptitiously steal yet another yummy sip from
the source.
Augment this short selection with your
own crackingly smart suggestions to improve air travel.
Did you really . . . drink from the bottle?
ReplyDeleteVery amusing cousin.