Mr Grumpy

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By Mr Grumpy - Thu 24th May 2012

 

For reasons I won’t go into here, I had to fly to the UK a couple of weeks ago, and then fly back home to Spain barely 12 hours later.

On my return leg I was fractious and grumpy and quite frankly probably not in the best frame of mind to accompany an assortment of Stag and Hen parties enjoying a low-cost weekend break to Spain.

Once seated on the plane I did my utmost not to join in the conviviality, and being perhaps the only person on the plane to be sober decided to partake in a pot of Tea and a bag of cheese and onion.

(I’ve just realised that it is possible that the Stewardesses and Pilots may have been sober too...)

I almost knocked the Pink Suede cowboy hat off the Hen sat in front of me when I heard the stag sat next to me order 6 cans of Stella and a bottle of champagne from the refreshment trolley. Worse still, I nearly spluttered my tea down the back of her “Shaz’s Hen Party” t-shirt when the stag sat next to him did exactly the same thing. And so it went, seat by seat down the plane.

So by 10.30am, barely 20 mins into the journey and flying cattle-class with almost 200 knob-heads of both sexes, it filled me with dread when I saw one of the stewardesses run to the front of the plane with a panic-stricken look on her face.

A minute or so later a grave-sounding Captain came over the PA system to appeal for calm as he announced that there would be no customary second service from the refreshments trolley as the flight had sold out of alcohol.

Seriously, you would have thought that the captain had just announced that we should adopt the brace position and we were about to ditch into the Bay of Biscay.

So here I am, stuck with a good few dozen inebriated idiots, baying for even more alcohol before they even pass out of British airspace, later to spend the rest of the afternoon vomiting down an alley between the Rose and Crown and the Burger Bar on some backstreet in Benidorm.

And I would dare say that this is typical of almost every “low-cost” flight operated to Spain on a Friday during the month of May.

Why May ? : Because statistically speaking May and June are the most popular months for Weddings to take place in the UK, and where there is a Wedding there has to follow the time-honoured tradition for a same-sex collection of acquaintances to decide that they are actually the Bride/Groom’s lifelong friends and embark on what I believe is called (and correct me if I am wrong) “A weekend on the piss”.

Did I hang my head in shame and cringe as the flock of inebriants marched through the arrivals hall at Alicante airport chanting “Ole, Ole, Ole” ? : Yup.

Did I tut as Shaz, Maz and Caz flashed their breasts (or at least I think they were breasts) at the Baggage Handlers ? : Yup.

But what got me was when one of the Hens called me a miserable bastard. Me !

(Mind you, that was nothing compared to what the air stewardesses called for me for not referring to them as “Flight Attendants”).