Fragment #34 - Permission to Land.

'How was the flight?' I ask in the banal manner of idle chit-chat. The fact is, I know the answer, flying anywhere with budgets my friends or I have is like a five hour long game of sardines, only it gets real old far more quickly.
They pack you onto these ageing piles of corroded aluminium and highly flammable materials that are held together with gaffa-tape and chewing gum, piloted by some under-paid alcoholic depressive who still manages to sound smug over the intercom. You're served watery coffee, overpriced cheap booze and are sold plastic trinkets only of interest to compulsive morons and the mentally handicaped by walking vending machines for various sexually transmitted diseases. “What would you like sir?” “Oh, the crappy coffee that tastes like bland urine, rust and oil... One of those plastic aeroplanes that have no actual basis in reality, er, and a heavy dose of chlamydia please... hold on just a sec while I re-mortgage my house.” You're crammed into seats scientifically designed by NAZI-pig-fuckers to cause deep vein thrombosis, madness and casual terrorism, the reason being that if you survive the flight then you will tell people how shit it was and that's never good for marketing. Then there is the food, oh the old stereotype of airline cuisine. You get a plastic tray of matter, there's no other way to describe it honestly. The menu should read:

'It was fine, I got upgraded to business class.' Not bad. I wish that had happened to me, I can only dream of the decadence of first class travel. It makes me cry tears of blood sometimes.
'Lucky you!'