The Seasoned Traveler - Myth or Fact?
I spent most of my life zooming in and out of airports all over the place and I have arrived at the conclusion that there are no expert travelers, only experienced ones. Some of us made aircraft transit lounges our homes in the fifties, sixties and seventies, when transit passengers were still a force to be reckoned with. I will have you know that my name is carved with pride into the viewing gallery railings at Colombo Airport (back in the good ol days when it was Ceylon, my dears.)
Do any of you modern young things want to know what life was like back then when air travel was a privilege only available to a select and carefully chosen few? Probably not but I am going to tell you anyway and risk boring you with interesting details of life in the slow lane.
I am one of those dinosaurs of the modern world; that is, someone who remembers traveling on BOAC. For those of you who have never heard of it, the initials stand for British Overseas Airways Corporation and they also stood for a standard of excellence when it came to passenger service in the olden days, somewhere between the ice age and Concorde.
I was about ten when I first staggered up a roll-away staircase into a VC10. I was traveling to Singapore, the journey took more than 18 hours and it was the mission of every cabin attendant aboard to entertain me and my two horrible brothers all the way to our destination whether they liked it or not.
In those days children were treated with kid gloves aboard planes, the thinking being that if the kids were happy the parents would pay a fortune to travel BOAC forever, or something along those lines. We were made generous gifts of flight bags, nice canvas ones with the legend BOAC emblazoned across the corners. An adjustable shoulder strap and large front pockets stuffed full of books and games ensured that each Junior Jet Club Member was able to assault fellow passengers with equanimity for the duration of the journey and be a complete pain in the rear to everyone sitting within a ten foot radius.
Inside the canvas bag was a booklet in a shiny wallet, proclaiming the owner to be in possession of however many miles worth of service, a bit like the Executive air miles system introduced years later and guarded with the same aggressive propriety. One had to fill out however many miles one had completed and then ask the Stewardess permission to visit the Captain and ask for his endorsement on the logged entry. Try that nowadays and you will get locked up for trying to hijack the cockpit.
Once you had logged so many miles you were entitled to a Junior Jet Club pin, a set of enamel wings, which you could attach to the lapel of your school blazer along with the Robertsons Golly and Prefect Badge. Other goodies in the bag included coloring pencils, a small coloring book with pictures of the other aircraft in the BOAC Fleet, a detailed resume of the crew (the anti-Terrorist authorities would have a cow) a sleeping mask (a gag would have been more welcome to other passengers), a dainty facial wipe which was completely inadequate for purpose and believe me saw plenty of service and a pair of strange looking socks which were designed to fit Bigfoot.
In those days no aircraft could make the entire journey without several refuels and anyway nobody cared to, when you could make at least five stops and explore the culture and liquid refreshments of each country as you went along. It was all very jolly and highly civilized. The stops would be in Paris, or Rome, or perhaps Frankfurt, Colombo, Bahrain, Baghdad, Delhi, Bombay. In my time at boarding school I visited them all, explored the souvenir stalls in the airport with my precious Transit card clutched to my bosom, trying to hide my yellow triangle which advertised that I was that Pest of All Pests, a BOAC Young Traveler Traveling Alone. I hated it. One might as well wear a sign on ones head saying Imbecile Please Patronize Me.
Should ones parents be particularly dedicated to ones safety, they could hire a person known as a Universal Aunt. My father hired one for me once, and it was a disaster. My Universal Aunt was well into her sixties and might have been nearer seventy. She arrived dressed in a black cape with a red edging, and a matching hat, resembling some sort of demented bat. She fell over my suitcase in the arrivals lounge at Heathrow and things went from bad to worse after that. I had to sit with her in a caf at Victoria station while she downed the contents of a large brandy glass to calm herself because she got us well and truly lost on the tube, and in the end I put her in a taxi and sent her home, promising not to report the incident to her employers or my parents.
One of the greatest treats of Young Passengers Traveling Alone was that you could look sadly into the eyes of the Purser, and tell him how homesick you were and how it would take your mind off your troubles if you could visit the cockpit. This was what it was all about as far as I was concerned. I just loved everything about the front end of an aircraft; the smell, the switches and dials, the incredible feeling of being in at the business end of it all.
Above all, the mind blowing view of the clouds and sky. My personal best was when I managed to persuade the crew to let me stay in the cockpit on landing, at night in Singapore. Believe it or not this was common then; kids would sit on the little jump seat near the rear of the cockpit and watch the city lights getting closer. Nowadays such behavior would start a riot, but back then the Captain and First Officer would wink conspiratorially and say Dont you dare tell anyone will you?
I had a logbook with the signatures of many, many Captains and First Officers, a record of my childhood as precious as a scrapbook or photo album, the air miles racked up in thousands and starred with comments from traveling companions. I cannot find it nowadays; it has become a casualty of many house moves. I do have a relic of BOAC, a Vaccination Record, rather like the one the vet gave me recently for the dog, with my immunizations recorded against Typhoid, Yellow Fever, and Cholera. Charming.
Aircraft seats then were masterpieces, and distanced a long way from the passenger in front of you, so that you could stand in the area in front of your seat, walk around in it even, converse with the passengers around you. My most recent journey, or should I say ordeal, involved supporting the sleeping head of the passenger in front of me, as he had reclined his seat into my lap on take off and insisted on keeping it there until landing. I took satanic pleasure in his airsickness two hours into the first leg.
Aircraft food was great, hot and tasty and served with decent silverware, not a plastic spoon in sight. My childhood passion for chocolate once resulted in my consuming six Swiss chocolate mousses donated by the first class passengers to the children traveling to school in economy. Do you think that would happen nowadays? Then, the cabin crew would pass by with hot coffee at least four times and nothing was too much trouble. One trip to Bulgaria I had a couple of years or so ago, I had the distinct impression the crew resented having to stop to let me disembark, when it would have been so much easier to parachute me out over a convenient snow drift.
I hate air travel now. The whole plastic, sticky, crammed and mass produced rubbishy, crappy, awful mess is something I avoid like the plague whenever I can. I remember those wonderful days though and consider myself superior to all of you lot who travel Economair and think you are in the jet set. Trust me, you are travelers without portfolio.
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