So I have a frosty relationship with flying, as I have elucidated upon/banged on about many times before. Despite my frosty relationship with flying, I am trying to wean myself off diazepam which I generally knock back on planes. Today I properly weaned, because I forgot it. And today was the day when first, the Charles de Gaulle ground staff decided to go on strike while the plane was being loaded, so we were stuck for 90 minutes waiting for the missing five passengers, who actually never turned up. The crossing was fine though how come no critic mentioned exactly how execrable Spiderman 3 is? Then came the landing, or rather it didn't. The plane descended. We reached the treetops. We were seconds from landing when wooooop the captain shoved the plane into a rather steep ascent. I think it was so terrifying I didn't even acknowledge how scary it was. Perhaps it was residual diazepam memory, but it seemed OK, even when the pilot came over the PA and said something about “because of traffic” he had to do another approach. He had a way with English, explaining the initial delay as “because of social movements by ground staff”, but even allowing for things lost in translation, his explanation was clearly bollocks. A flight attendant backed up the fiction by saying that “it happens all the time.”
Liar. I know they were lying because it was a perfectly clear day, and because when we did land after circling for 45 minutes, the landing gear sounded like it had spent far too long in the Mitchell brothers' garage. It was honestly the worst landing I've ever experienced.
Then it took an hour to get through immigration and I was let into this great debt-ridden country by a young man called Stronk. I'm going to sleep now to dream of landing gear.