A whinge and a prayer
Sunday Star Times July 2018
Last week I wrote some words mocking Air New Zealand. Then I boarded an Air New Zealand plane. The date was Friday the 13th.
We were bound for Wellington which, as we all know, can't be beaten on a good day and is also the scariest place on the planet to land.
As we waited for the last remaining passenger to respond to 40 personalised boarding calls, I watched my old colleague Mark Sainsbury leaf through the newspaper until he came to the crossword and took out his pen.
I took to Twitter: Sitting behind Sainso on a plane and either his hand is paralysed or that crossword is severely cryptic.
My friend Gary said: He's going to KICK himself when he realises the word was 'moustache'.
We took to the air with my karma account in a sorry state.
The skies were blue and Aotearoa was bathed in golden light. A dot of a ferry in the Marlborough Sounds came trailing through the stillest, deepest, darkest of blue waters. Over there was Pencarrow, out to the right was the wild southern coast and its rocks and its little cottages. What a wonderful, beautiful land we are blessed to live in, I thought, as we came across Moa Point, and the ground rushed up to meet us.
And then it didn't. In the final slice of a second as I waited for the reassuring bump of the wheels, the power poured on and the nose lifted and we were powering back into the sky. Fair enough just a go-around, had that before at Wellington, no worries, we're not in a hurry.
But then two things happened. The flight attendant clicked on his microphone to give us the reassuring explanation that this was all routine and happens all the time. So far so usual.
But then he said the captain couldn't talk to us right now because he was very busy. And just at that moment the plane levelled off over the harbour, wobbled a bit and we felt a complete absence of propulsion.
Very. Busy. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?? This was the moment I turned to Karren and saw deep worry in her face. Later I would discover this was because all the colour had gone from mine.
There is nothing more dreary than people sharing their recurring dreams with you. I will now share mine. I am in a plane. The scenery and setting are new every time but this part never changes: it all goes very quiet and I realise we're plunging towards the ground and my feeling inside the dream is oh god this is not a dream it's really happening.
Somewhere above Petone I thought oh God this is really happening. A moment ago we were in a magic seat in the sky and I was listening to Allison Moorer and now I feel utterly imprisoned in a hurtling machine of death and there is nothing I can do about it and WHAT DOES THAT MEAN VERY BUSY??
You will know this has a happy ending because if a plane had fallen on Petone last week you would have heard. And of course if a plane were to crash every time a nervous flier thinks it's about to happen, there would be hundreds falling to earth every hour.
So here is what I have learned this week. Firstly, that people who make their living using words might be a bit too acutely sensitive to the way other people use them. It's possible that flight attendant just gives all his words an upgrade. Very meant nothing at all, really.
Also, I got a reminder of what it means to feel utterly powerless. If you're born to the kind of advantages of gender, place and time that I have, that doesn't happen all that much. For plenty of people it happens every day; with a partner, say, or a landlord, or an employer - take your pick. That's your true living nightmare, and it shouldn't happen to anyone.
And thirdly, I conclude I can be an absolute sook, and there's only one thing to do about it. In the future, when the flight attendant turns on the mic, I will just keep listening to Allison Moorer.
