Flight Paths
27 September 2021
Stuart Letton
If it's got a bit hotter these last few days, that will be our contribution to global warming from thirteen hours in a 737. Sorry about that Greta. However, we did make quite a few profiteering PCR providers happy.
It always seems amazing that in less than twenty four hours, albeit, mostly sleepless hours, sat with your knees around your chin, wondering what will get you first, Covid or thrombosis, that you can be transported to the other side of the world.
Edinburgh, across Europe, flying over places you've never heard of, the interestingly town named "Batman" for instance. Through what some might consider unfriendly airspace, to land in the middle of the desert, Doha to be exact, where you can get tooled up with a new Gucci handbag or a Rolex at eye watering prices at two in the morning. Really?
While we were home, in amongst the six months of junk mail was an invitation to enjoy one of the Scottish government's free medical screenings. Prevention being better than the cure as they say. So, off we went to the local hospital where I patiently sat in the waiting room, Anne wisely staying in the car. As I sat there in my socially distanced chair, I looked around and wondered if in fact it was smart to take my finely honed and healthy body to sit amongst folk with all kinds of strange symptoms. Most worrying was the double doors across from me bearing a sign, "Discharge Lounge". Yuck. Bring your wellies.
Back on topic, from the desert, it was a short hop to Seychelles and, as expected, the flight path went over the now, quite empty anchorage, then zoomed right over the top of Time Bandit, looking grey, even from a few hundred feet up, coated stem to stern in a layer of 'plane exhaust and fine dust courtesy of the cement works next door.
The fruit bats follow the same flight path and for the last eight weeks have been bombing our decks from a modest height. I don't know what they've been eating but, mixed with cement and aero fuel it's hardened like, well, cement. We've a good few days on our knees scrubbing under the tropical sun.
That should fix our peely wally look.