I had some pretty weird dreams last night thanks to a not inconsequential amount of cheese that I felt the need to eat late on after getting back from a night out.

For some strange reason I was flying between various cities, none of which I can recall, with a couple of travelling companions I don’t think I had ever met before, yet with whom I seemed to be very good friends, in a variety of aircraft which were getting progressively smaller with every flight I took - to the point where we were all sitting in a row alongside the pilot on a bench seat. Oddly, by this point the pilot had a steering wheel and it wasn’t until the end of the flight that I thought to question the fact that we were all in the cockpit and wondered what the hell was in the rest of the plane and why we weren’t sitting there instead.

Nevertheless, I was lucky to be on board that particular flight as the stewardess pulled me to one side when I was boarding and said I didn’t look well – after close examination it transpired that I was running a temperature… a temperature of -14C. Fortunately it would seem that the airline’s cut-off point for such cases according to the handy graduated reference card she produced (the scale coloured red to blue as an added visual aid) was -16C, and I was declared fit to fly.

Take-off was delayed slightly as we had to wait for a number of very small planes to take off – so small in fact that they were single passenger planes, flown by the passenger – they were in effect a scale model of a 737 which the passenger sat on top of. While we were queueing on the runway preparing for take off, I had time to wonder how this would work as I could see a number of potential problems; firstly, the pilot/passenger (for they are one and the same) would freeze to death at any kind of altitude, secondly they would die of asphyxiation at any kind of altitude, thirdly they would not be particulaly aerodynamic and last but not least, the motorcycle luggage panniers strung over the tail section of the fuselage would undoubtedly catch fire moments after the engines burst into life.

Quite why I suddenly became all inquisitive at this point having taken everything else I was presented with as perfectly normal is beyond me.

I woke up with a smile on my face anyway, and I’ll be eating more cheese tonight.

L

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