Photographers, artists, poets: show us HANDS.
When you become a senior citizen, your
hands also become senior. No clear skin, just marks where it used to be clear
and some bumps on the way. No problem, I can live with it.
So I board a plane on a long flight. I do not do long flights any more, but an annual hop from Zürich airport to London City is long enough. Not that I am afraid of flying, everything that goes up must come down. It just depends how it all happens.
My seat neighbours have been varied, colourful and interesting over the past years. As I am not the type that grips my seat with fright and worry until I land, wondering whether I will at last find out what happens in the afterlife, I like to pass time on the plane. Mr. Swiss feels sorry for my seat neighbours as he knows I will probably involve them in a conversation, which they may not actually want.
The most interesting person was a computer expert. This was really up my street. I was at the time a working woman and anything in the IT range was of interest. I naturally bombarded the poor man with all sorts of computer science questions. When we landed he made a hurried goodbye and disappeared quickly. Shame really, I would have liked to have continued the conversation. Did I say something wrong?
Once there was an Indonesian gentleman on the next seat, so I could involve myself in life in Indonesia. Then there was an Arab gentleman who nearly missed the plane. He told me they did not believe the particulars on his passport and he had to undergo a detailed investigation until they allowed him to board the plane. Needless to say I did feel a little uncomfortable and was glad to reach the ground again. When the gentleman left his seat for a natural cause, I was glad to see him return directly and not make a detour to the pilot’s cabin.
My favourite victim was a Swiss housewife, married to an English person, who actually lived in England. She had been visiting her mother in Switzerland who was ill at the time. It was the flight I had made to attend my mother’s funeral in England, so I had to book everything quickly, within a day. It was a worrying time for me, but sitting next to this lady, swopping our life’s experiences both living in a country we were not born into, took my mind off the problems awaiting when arriving in London. We were so busy talking, we did not realise the plane was landing. She met her husband and I my father at London Airport.
Now to a fortune teller occupying the neighbouring seat. This has never happened to me, but I have a feeling if it did the fortune teller would become an unhappy person and probably change her occupation for something with real hands and feet, a chiropodist or perhaps an orthopedic hand specialist (found that in Wikipedia), to get down to the basics and not the airy fairy stuff about having a long life line (in a plane?), meeting the love of my life (been there done that since 46 years) and being blessed with children (am not sure about the blessed bit, but they turned out OK). Meeting a non-believing logical person like me would probably destroy all her belief telling people what the future holds. I can see her after leaving the plane, with her tribal relations bemoaning the palmistry trade as being something unrealistic or, on the other hand, she might place, a curse on all Anglo Swiss they cross her path, calling us heathens, enfant terrible of the human race, and not worth bothering about. In her palmistry eyes she would not see lines on my hands, just noughts and crosses most likely, with a few daggers and claws for good measure.
OK I am not the type to believe in all that drivel. I must admit I almost visited a hand reader once in New York when I saw the poster on the door. “Hands read for … dollars” (cannot remember how many dollars, but probably fitted my currency allowance). That would just have been for the fun of it. Who knows that meeting might have changed my life. Perhaps when living the consulting room I would bump into Brad Pitt and he would fall undying in love with me, or perhaps I would not leave the room and the witch would ban me forever into the eternal fires of downtown New York.
And now for my cat’s paw Nera. I wonder what a fortune teller would make of that. Probably she had already lost ten of her nine lives and was to be avoided when her claws were protruding.
So I board a plane on a long flight. I do not do long flights any more, but an annual hop from Zürich airport to London City is long enough. Not that I am afraid of flying, everything that goes up must come down. It just depends how it all happens.
My seat neighbours have been varied, colourful and interesting over the past years. As I am not the type that grips my seat with fright and worry until I land, wondering whether I will at last find out what happens in the afterlife, I like to pass time on the plane. Mr. Swiss feels sorry for my seat neighbours as he knows I will probably involve them in a conversation, which they may not actually want.
The most interesting person was a computer expert. This was really up my street. I was at the time a working woman and anything in the IT range was of interest. I naturally bombarded the poor man with all sorts of computer science questions. When we landed he made a hurried goodbye and disappeared quickly. Shame really, I would have liked to have continued the conversation. Did I say something wrong?
Once there was an Indonesian gentleman on the next seat, so I could involve myself in life in Indonesia. Then there was an Arab gentleman who nearly missed the plane. He told me they did not believe the particulars on his passport and he had to undergo a detailed investigation until they allowed him to board the plane. Needless to say I did feel a little uncomfortable and was glad to reach the ground again. When the gentleman left his seat for a natural cause, I was glad to see him return directly and not make a detour to the pilot’s cabin.
My favourite victim was a Swiss housewife, married to an English person, who actually lived in England. She had been visiting her mother in Switzerland who was ill at the time. It was the flight I had made to attend my mother’s funeral in England, so I had to book everything quickly, within a day. It was a worrying time for me, but sitting next to this lady, swopping our life’s experiences both living in a country we were not born into, took my mind off the problems awaiting when arriving in London. We were so busy talking, we did not realise the plane was landing. She met her husband and I my father at London Airport.
Now to a fortune teller occupying the neighbouring seat. This has never happened to me, but I have a feeling if it did the fortune teller would become an unhappy person and probably change her occupation for something with real hands and feet, a chiropodist or perhaps an orthopedic hand specialist (found that in Wikipedia), to get down to the basics and not the airy fairy stuff about having a long life line (in a plane?), meeting the love of my life (been there done that since 46 years) and being blessed with children (am not sure about the blessed bit, but they turned out OK). Meeting a non-believing logical person like me would probably destroy all her belief telling people what the future holds. I can see her after leaving the plane, with her tribal relations bemoaning the palmistry trade as being something unrealistic or, on the other hand, she might place, a curse on all Anglo Swiss they cross her path, calling us heathens, enfant terrible of the human race, and not worth bothering about. In her palmistry eyes she would not see lines on my hands, just noughts and crosses most likely, with a few daggers and claws for good measure.
OK I am not the type to believe in all that drivel. I must admit I almost visited a hand reader once in New York when I saw the poster on the door. “Hands read for … dollars” (cannot remember how many dollars, but probably fitted my currency allowance). That would just have been for the fun of it. Who knows that meeting might have changed my life. Perhaps when living the consulting room I would bump into Brad Pitt and he would fall undying in love with me, or perhaps I would not leave the room and the witch would ban me forever into the eternal fires of downtown New York.
And now for my cat’s paw Nera. I wonder what a fortune teller would make of that. Probably she had already lost ten of her nine lives and was to be avoided when her claws were protruding.
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I with you in thinking palm-reading and other types of "fortune-telling" is all just mumbo-jumbo.
ReplyDeleteI'm not one for conversation of flights. I like to look out the window when over land, I find flying over the Earth endlessly fascinating, and I either sleep or watch a movie when out over the Atlantic somewhere.