Gasses gather inside you as if your own personal air balloon is being inflated

This plane is far too full. Given the many precautions of the airport with careful separation of passengers by means of floor signs, sealed off areas, seats taped over to enforce distancing and even the queueing policy and masks mandatory there was a sense of these people know how to make this Covid-safe space. But even in the airport, despite all appearances, there were obvious flaws. Every single hand cleansing dispenser was empty. I knew because I’m paranoid enough to insist on using them all. That should’ve given me a heads up that all was not what it seemed. However, it was only when I entered the departure lounge that everything went really pear-shaped. My gate was absolutely packed with the queue snaking right around the entire hall. People were trying to keep a safe distance but the room was just not big enough. 

Then, we were jammed into the airport buses, on route to the plane, like sardines. Gone was any pretence of social distancing. We were packed far too tightly to permit even a bulky handbag to separate us. I consoled myself with the thought that the plane would be better. After all, the last time I flew on this route, in Covid times, there were only 16 people on the whole plane. I actually managed to stretch out and sleep across three vacant seats for the first time in years. Not this time! The plane rapidly filled to the brim. Obviously, being a Christmas flight, many were returning to Dublin for the festive period. I initially thought I would be the only fortunate person on the plane to have vacant seats on either side of me. Unfortunately, once the door of the plane closed there was a rapid reshuffling and a man took one of the empty seats in my row. I briefly contemplated the social etiquette of pointing out he should sit in the seat indicated by his ticket. However, since there was by now a massive reseating going on all over the plane I decided making a fuss was not in order. At least I didn’t have the chap two rows ahead beside me. He was wearing a mask so small it did not cover his mouth or nose, more of a chin strap. Who does he think he is fooling? Never mind I put my head back and try to relax. The stewards came around to take the food order and I politely declined. I have purchased an expensive FFP3 mask for this flight and I’m not risking removing it to either drink or eat. But darn it the people all around me are suddenly removing their masks so they can stuff their faces. Perhaps I should just relax after all I have had Covid already in May. 

On that last trip, I had flown to Ireland from Malta and brought a packed lunch to eat on the plane during the journey. After the flight, I got onto the bus for the long journey to Belfast. On that particular last leg of the journey, I did not feel at all well. In fact, by the time it arrived in Belfast, outside the Europa hotel, I barely managed to stagger off the bus before vomiting on the pavement. This startled me as I rarely ever vomit. As I’ve mentioned before, even in the face of food poisoning (a dodgy Chinese family meal) all vomited but my dad and I.  Then, when sailing with friends in rough weather, who were vomiting in unison either side of me, I managed to still enjoy my Mars bar. So, it was weird for me to feel so bad. I recovered once I had emptied my stomach. But within two weeks my mum and I both had Covid. Did I catch it on the plane? Somehow two weeks seems too long. Who knows, it could have been from a supermarket trip, getting petrol for the car, a neighbour who came too close to talk.   I’ll never know but Covid was horrid. I had a mild but nasty period but my poor 87-year-old mum was eventually hospitalised and had to have oxygen. Thankfully she fought her way back to health despite her age, damaged lungs and asthma and came home safely. Mind you, both of us are convinced our brains are just not the same. 

So, the reason I’m a bit paranoid on this plane is because I’m heading once again to be with my mum and I’m frankly terrified I’ll pick up the virus on route. The science is rather vague about how long antibodies and T cells remain in your system after you’ve been exposed to the virus and recovered. A few months was mentioned initially but then it seemed to depend on the severity of the original infection. Those who with the milder symptoms seem to lose their immunity faster. Then, there’s also vagueness about whether you yourself could be immune but still carry the virus to others. Just the possibility of that has generated a longing for 2m between me and all my neighbours on this flight. The younger generation seems much more relaxed about this disease. The young man behind me is chatting up a pretty girl in the seat beside him. They have that excited nervous first conversation, not exactly flirty, but each wanting to put their best foot forward. I’m wishing they would talk less as they’re too close to me. 

There are only two elderly people on this flight and I can tell they are panicking. Both wear a visor and a mask to protect themselves, a smart move I should have thought of. When the old man had entered the plane he had started a heated argument with a young man with a crewcut seated in 1A. The elderly man was sure this upstart was sitting in his seat and argued loudly while hitting his boarding pass with a red pointed finger. The air steward intervened as the young man searched for his boarding pass on his phone. It took time for the truth to emerge as the elderly man behind his mask and visor couldn’t hear the steward very well. It turned out his boarding ticket was in row three not row one and he and his grey-haired wife were eventually persuaded to move on down the plane to their real seats. In the middle of the confusion, his wife took a severe cramp in her calf and had to stop and rub it while groaning in pain. I have real sympathy with this getting older. Along with more pain, it makes mistakes more likely. There really should be compassion for the elderly. Remembering to wear masks is tricky once you get past a certain age. You can easily forget. 

In Malta, masks are mandatory everywhere outdoors and I have managed to get a block from home before remembering to pull a mask from my bag. Why is it so tricky? It’s because it’s foreign. The younger generation can adapt to change but older people have their life long habits engraved in brains of cement.  When you periodically lose your train of thought, can’t find that word and miss place inanimate objects with depressing regularity then obeying brand new regulations is really tough. There is a video of a pensioner online, entering a supermarket and mistaking a drink dispenser for an alcoholic hand spray and pouring the brightly coloured sugar drink over both palms and then rubbing in the sticky stuff earnestly. One’s heart leaps in real sympathy. When they hand out fines for not wearing a mask I think old age should be a valid excuse! 

Travelling had already become harder, even before Covid hit and was becoming very tiring. The distance covered by travellers in the airport has become longer, time standing in queues in steep stairways adds to the torture. The steps on a Ryanair aircraft are rickety and narrow with steps that are smaller than normal-sized feet. You end up coming down the steps on your heels with most of your foot projecting out mid-air. The whole structure moves like a rickety ladder and there’s no room to carry a suitcase by your side. Instead, you have to hold it in front of you pulling you forward dangerously over your toes. The fact that these ladders fold into the plane has to be convenient for the airlines but it’s a real liability for the elderly/pregnant/parent with small children. 

Another couple in front of me is also courting across the aisle. I suspect young people are desperate to socialise. Planes are replacing nightclubs, pubs and other social venues. We older ones avoid such unnecessary exposure to germs.  The young are excited to have these hours to get to know someone new at last. I cannot blame them. After all, they are young and feel invincible. Their immune systems are humming along nicely. Fighting off infections like crack troops. Ours are a withered bunch who have been whittled away by chronic conditions. Our systems often already need medication to keep our troops in line and in order.  These elderly troops seem less vigilant and effective.  I can remember getting deep cuts in my knees, when younger, and they healed so quickly. Healed and left no scars. Now marks remain for years and can even grow to form deep creases. Opportunistic growths appear in unlikely places and these old bodies view these invaders as bedfellows that just have to be endured. Decisions are sometimes made to rip such opportunistic growths off a shoulder or back but need to be weighed with the scar that will be left. Deciding to go for the scar or just ignore this new tenant have to be thought through.  In fact, with time you are a bit embarrassed by your battlefield body.  Once a nurse was worried by a huge bleeding sore on my forearm when I had decided this particular growth had outgrown my tolerance for it.  On my next visit to a health clinic, a different nurse was horrified by the size of an unsightly growth on my wrist.  As I made my way home I was trying to work out which had caused more distress in medical staff.  To rip off or leave alone, difficult to decide?

The other change that age brings is that you are more sensitive to stress.  You’d think with experience you’d be able to weather difficulties better.  But the truth is with age you long for peace and quiet and toxic atmospheres corrode your wellbeing.  Unexpected stress freaks you out.  As do last-minute changes or having to rush because you are late.  Responsibilities weigh more heavily.  You sweat over grandchildren.  Worry about their safety, fear you will fail them through inattention or carelessness.  Knowing how tricky inanimate objects have become, like jar lids that won't open, you are freaked out by these active strong-willed characters.  Their minds are like quicksilver and you feel like a heavy-footed cart horse.  These bones don’t move so fast anymore and these old brains don’t process thoughts so well.  There are benefits. Strangely emotions grow stronger with age.  A beautiful landscape can move us to tears.  As can a child’s smile or a sweet memory of an old friend.

Sleep changes. When you are young you can do without sleep all night. Function pretty well all the next day before collapsing the next night. When you are old, sleep becomes something you keep track off like a bank balance. Every morning you will enquire of everyone you live with if they slept well. It is a subject of interest to you as sleeping has become a hit or miss affair. No more total collapse into a blissful full night’s sleep. Instead, bladder trips pepper the night and often sleep does not follow these outings. Then the night shift of bedroom roof inspection begins.  Tired of the horrible thoughts that bubble up in a sleep-deprived mind I generally get up and have breakfast at 3 am. With a full belly sometimes sleep comes as an unexpected desert. With such varied experiences at night no wonder the elderly have daily conversations about sleep. And that doesn’t even cover the dreams. In old age, you can find yourself back in stress-inducing situations that years ago you might have faced. But now, at this stage in life, the stress is hyper experienced and unbearable.  You wake up traumatised by an experience you manage to wade through with difficulty in your prime but is now played in your dream as an awful sequel. When an older person asks you with genuine concern ‘Did you sleep well?” Know in what context they ask.  They know what a bad night feels like, the emotions that rip open wounded hearts. So, out of love, they want to be reassured that your sleep was sound and blissful. It pleases them to know someone is getting a good night’s sleep.

My romantic neighbours behind me are on their second meal of this flight. They consume vast quantities of drink that we older travellers would never challenge our bladders with. These young people after hours of flight look remarkably fresh. It reminds me of two friends of mine who went into the local maternity ward at the same time and gave birth on the same day. Amused by the synchronicity of this event, photos were taken of the two friends with their new babies on the ward. The young mother in her 20’s looked like a model in her nightgown with a freshly flushed complexion glowing with happiness. My 43-year-old older friend held her baby like an anchor that was too heavy to hold and looked like she had been through 20 rounds of a vicious heavyweight boxing match.  Even her hair seemed freaked out. The contrast between the two mothers in the photograph had us all roaring in laughter and sympathy. As I look around this plane I can see a similar phenomenon.  The young look exactly as they did when they entered this plane. We oldies look like we’ve been dragged through bushes backwards for several nights. Eyelids are closing independently of their owners and mouths seem to be pulled by gravity into grimaces that speak of back pain that has reached intolerable proportions. Old bones shift uncomfortably and long to be flat on orthopaedic mattresses. Cramps come and go in unlikely places and vague indigestion has begun to brew. Gasses gather inside you as if your own personal air balloon is being inflated.  The noisy happy flirtatious chat of excited young people has become like dentist drills in our heads. We admire their energy and commitment but long for our own oblivion in a deep sleep. Our bank balances are running extremely low and being polite to others takes incredible effort. Excited chitchat from youngsters is like fingernails on the blackboard. 

But we must endure.  That’s what age teaches you. Patience with yourself and others, the flaws, the worries and the pains. It’s a hard-won quality and it makes you wish for all onboard this plane a safe journey and a good night sleep at the end of it. Because isn’t that what we all long for at the end of these lives of ours.

Being There

There are moments when you’re called upon to undertake some deed. Many times, you may feel overwhelmed by your own inadequacies as you take up your position on the battlefield of life. 

I recall when six months pregnant being summoned to look after a lovely relative who had had a stroke while living in the south of England. Flying from Northern Ireland to the UK I managed to fill all six sick bags across the entire row of seats at the back of the plane.  I’ve never been sure why my pregnant self decided to be so sick. Even during morning sickness, much earlier in the pregnancy, my body had felt nauseous but had refused to regurgitate valuable food. In fact, in all cases of food poisoning in our family, usually the result of a takeaway, my constitution was like that of my dad’s.  While the rest of my sickened family cleared out their systems by one end or the other (i.e. vomiting or diarrhoea), our systems perversely decided our bodies could handle the toxicity and extract some useful nutrition from the poison we had ingested.  To this day I have no idea why my stomach decided on performing like something from The Exorcist but I still remember the horrified expressions of my fellow passengers fighting to provide me with enough bags to contain the huge quantities of carrot coloured lumpy porridge I projected.

I was also well aware of being under-qualified for the task ahead which would involve caring, cooking and moderate housekeeping. I decided to camouflage my deficiencies by faking proficiency in these areas.  This strategy consisted of

1.    Turning the vacuum cleaner on for half an hour a day so that my relative, who was bedridden, would be comforted by the evident housecleaning going on below. I must confess I did not move the vacuum cleaner just turned it on daily, downstairs. In my defence when I started this practice there was a definite improvement in my patient’s demeanour who seemed disproportionately happier and more grateful.

2.     My tasteless meals were presented as being lighter on the stomach and easier to digest. In fact, my farola (finely-milled semolina) pudding dish became a staple favourite as my relative mentioned she had never been served this their entire life. Either that or she was too polite to complain about the food served. Come to think of it that seems much more likely explanation.

3.     My sweet relative knew that other family members around the world were worried to death about her. So, a daily task of mine was writing letters to distant relatives and friends. She would dictate and I would write and subsequently post these missives. She would insist on praising my housekeeping skills, my cooking and my kindness in every letter sent. As she had relatives in almost every continent I felt at times I was undertaking a one-woman self-promotion of sainthood campaign.  At times there I would blush in embarrassment as I wrote my own praises. But even this letter writing seemed to bring the patient pleasure and the avalanche of responses that arrived in the following days and weeks brought welcome messages of love and concern that were sustaining as regular blood transfusions for my patient.

Thankfully she made a full recovery. Eventually, I confessed my vacuuming trick. When she regained mobility, I had to!  She spent the next month trying to tidy and clean her house and find where I had put stuff in her kitchen. These activities I told myself also speeded her long-term recovery.

She was always very grateful and thankful for my presence during her illness and the lesson learned for me was, even when poorly prepared and totally inadequate, just showing up on the battlefield wins you a medal of sorts. Sometimes it’s not about your abilities but about being there for others.  I can look back now and wish I had been more effective and useful but her sweet response to my incompetence taught me so much.  If we stop wasting time thinking about our inadequacies we can probably achieve so much more.

“Let no excessive self-criticism or any feelings of inadequacy, inability or inexperience hinder you …..”

 Riḍván Message 152, Universal House of Justice

What is it about travel and food?

What is it about travel? I eat continually as if walking epic journeys in need of nutrition to sustain me. The fact that I am bused, flown, carried from pillar to post is incidental. My system may be assisted by all this technology but runs on a much more primitive animalistic operating system. In such close quarters with unknown numbers of my fellow species does their presence trigger a grazing hunger. Eat quickly what is available before others tuck in and leave me bereft?

Or is the hunger stress-related? Far from my home, sofa, fridge and familiar surroundings do I overeat to distract me from all this strangeness.  The comfort of a full belly brings a satisfied sleepiness that almost neutralizes the foreignness. Like a baby, I swig the bottle and stuff down biscuits to shut out the otherness that threatens!

I see the stress on others too. Even queueing is an irritant. Why did he push in? Surely, we should be moving now, where is my boarding ticket and do have I still have my passport!

We hug our familiar belongings, sure that everyone wants what we own. Pulling bags closer still, wrapping handbag straps around shoulders and checking locks on suitcases. The fear-inducing statement, “Have you packed your own case?” is asked. Followed by,"Do you carry inflammable explosive objects?" Of course, you don’t! But the idiots in front and behind you may have not have packed their own cases! They probably don’t even realize the danger of Lithium-ion batteries occasionally bursting into flames on planes.

Suddenly, one feels travelling should only be for those intelligent enough to obey the rules. There should be special scanners to pick out those too stupid to be allowed to fly. The airline staff seem unduly inexperienced and uniformly distracted. One wonders if the pilots and crew on planes are busy on their iPhones checking Facebook instead of watching dials. Answering emails and text messages instead of monitoring storm warnings.

In addition to all this everyone who works in the cockpit or as stewards are all of reproductive age and so are by nature perpetually distracted. Either recovering from devastating breakups or enduring stormy/heated relationships or perennially on the hunt for new potential partners.  All these emotions leave little room for professional performances.  You feel a strong desire to scream “focus, focus please!”

The vista of cotton wool clouds stretching outside my window seat reminds me of some celestial last vision. The intercom announces all the goodies for sale from aftershave to portable speakers, perfume etc and reminds one of the materialistic nature of this whole enterprise. The speaker’s inability to converse coherently in basic English has me doubting his organizational skills and technical know-how. These people have to do cross-checks and safety things after all. I see how slowly they struggle to serve drinks and food as they meander down the cabin. “Come on people get a move on!” You’ve only done this thousands of times. How can you be so crap at it? Running the full length of the cabin to retrieve more lids, Pringles, water, ice. The fact that you are so cack-handed at these simple tasks makes me doubt your ability to deplane this aircraft. Yes, that’s what they call it. Is that phrase itself an evidence of stupidity?

Bring me more food! I am noticing too much. How annoying is my neighbour with his stinky socks. Why can’t he keep his shoes on! The red-haired air steward keeps picking his nose between serving drinks. I know it’s Ryanair, and their uniforms and training scream budget airlines, but surely, they could’ve been given a special training session on the inappropriateness of nose picking when serving drinks and food.

The two women in front have talked incessantly for the entire four-hour flight about their families, their partners, their homes, their holidays, their jobs in those elevated excited tones that strangers use. As if whispering and talking in your normal voice would indicate an intimacy that is not justified by this casual encounter. Instead, the proper volume is high, animated by loud forced laughter. Couples desperately ask others to switch seats so they can sit with their partners. Having achieved the sought-after goal they say not one word to their partner the rest of the flight. The longing is not to be with their loved one at all but to be free of the bloody stranger! That way they can comfortably sulk and moan as normal. It makes this flying tube a little more like home to have that familiar face frowning over Suduko beside them.

Mind you, I shouldn’t complain, we landed safely and we all survived.  However, since I am in complaining mode I’d like to mention the seats on Ryanair.  They are so uncomfortable. I am not claustrophobic but the distance between the seat in front and my face is worryingly small.  Mind you, the prices keep me coming back for more.  Worrying to hear of their plans to have us all standing in the future (surely its a joke?). 

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But perhaps this group's song captures the whole cheap airline experience best.

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