John Lee Taggart

I was chatting with a friend just the other day over dinner, when she told me a story of how she had endured a horrendous flight littered with visa complications – and vigorous crosschecks! Just my kinda story, right?! Anyway this led me to tell her of my last flight…which I think I didn’t share with you at the time!

…the tale takes place some time in January of this year – as I was on route from a lovely Christmas spent in England, back to the land of the morning calm: South Korea. The flight is a monster, but a necessary evil…I can’t sleep on flights at all, so it’s basically just a day of watching movies…oh and looking around at everyone else who is well and truly conked out as if in a witch’s spell…

Which I suppose is kind of amusing at first, but 12 hours later…six movies in…not so much. Anyway the flight in question was pretty normal in that respect – I had the distinct honour of being nestled in between two people; a hefty Chinese chap, and a young very smiley Chinese lady. For obvious reasons there wasn’t going to be much conversation, a few head nods here and there perhaps…pointing to the food, and giving a thumbs up (maybe), but no actual words. Which is fine with me ordinarily. But as you may already know…messages don’t always have to be sent by a flexing of your vocal chords alone…no, no – a picture is worth a thousand words…

…you see I was already a little uncomfortable thanks to the chunky overzealous arms of my new friend to the left – but he had finally fallen asleep watching an Adam Sandler movie so I had a bit of respite! But I was far from off the hook, as to my right there was still some rather odd activity going on…the young lady was on her phone which I wasn’t paying attention to – until she was sitting there holding it at a strange angle – the kind of angle you would use if you said “hey, check out this video of a cat punching a dog!” or “look at this picture of my Dad eating a pie!” …or – okay the list is endless, and I think you get it. So naturally I looked, what was she even trying to show m-

OH, WAIT. Erm, I see…at the end of her outstretched hand was a rather lurid mobile phone screensaver – to say it caught my eye is an understatement! I’ll stop skirting the issue, and just come out with it – It was a picture of a caucasian gentleman and his Asian lady friend getting rather  fond of each other in a kitchen. I didn’t know where to look, and didn’t want to make it obvious I had just caught sight of it…so allowed my gaze to continue to the window, thinking that perhaps I could pretend that’s where I was looking all along…just staring blankly out of the glass, like the school days…

…but that wasn’t enough for her, she propped her arm up in my way, and opened the lock screen of the phone, to reveal a second wallpaper, with a similar kind of theme. I nodded, and gave one of those “ahh, I see!” forehead raising movements, before desperately busying myself with the movie menu screen in front of me ~

Whilst she flicked through her gallery of pictures.

We got over that little hump, and back to our polite manners when eating together – eventually I couldn’t hold it any longer, and needed to pee. I hate asking people to stand up, but I had been forcing it to the back of my mind for so long! So I gently nudged the guy, and asked if I could get past – “hmmm, NO.” He retorted, before pulling his sleeping mask over his sweaty face, and crossing his arms. Well I certainly hadn’t expected that…I asked again, but got no answer – so told myself I could probably wait another movie, after which I would probably violently stamp over him to urinate . Something to look forward to if you will! How long can you last John, let’s find out!

But you see great minds think alike! So the girl needed to go too…she did a similar nudge to me to get past – to which I explained about the immovable force blocking the way, she tried to get his attention by flicking him which I thought was odd, and even spoke in Chinese – but nothing. So she opted to climb over everyone instead. Perhaps it was all part of a master scheme, an amazing rouse that the guy was in on, but she suddenly became oh so clumsy…tripping over in some mad slapstick routine which always ended with her sitting on me. Like actually sitting on me – I’ll let you visualise it I’m not going to describe, you have imaginations, use them. However after this little bit, she slid majestically past sleeping beauty with no problem at all!

Strange that, huh? 

Anyway, there is a happy ending to all of this – she woke him up coming back, so I was able to use this window of opportunity to use the bathroom myself. And it will go down as one of the best pees of my life. Waiting makes things more special my friends, remember that. 

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