I had to go to Cardiff yesterday which turned in to a pretty long winded journey from Belfast. Air Wales seem to have taken over the route from BMI, so the flight was in a dinky ATR-42. There were no flights coming home at a realistic time in the evening so I decided to catch the train from Cardiff. I got a local Taunton service through Newport and the Severn Tunnel to Bristol and then a bus out to the airport.
Bristol seems to be a pretty big hub for Easyjet and they had a series of major delays causing problems.
I didn't realise what a flight snob I was until I started people watching. There were drunk Scots left over from the Six Nations in Cardiff, mothers feeding their screaming kids burger kings, chain smoking paramilitary tatooed Belfastians, the complete Easyjet demographic.
Anyway I managed to get an emergency exit seat in the easyjet seat scramble, the plane was gradually filling up and the last two seats available were behind me. On comes a couple of blitzed Belfast people, middle aged alkies, stinking of drink.
They perched themselves down and he proceeded to give us a running commentary all the way home about the fight he had in Wetherspoons on Saturday night, interspersed with random abuse.
I was reasding a section of my book, the Empire by Niall Ferguson. The paragraph I read as I was listening to the abuse from behind was describing British migration as a last resort, it seemed quite appropriate.

At 8.00pm was obliged to batten down both fore and main hatches, and a little after I really think there was the oddest shene betwixt decks that ever I heard or seed. There was some sleeping, some spewing, some pishing, some shitting, some farting, some flyrting, some damning, some Blasting their leggs and thighs, some their livers, lungs, lights and eyes. And for to make the shene the odder, some curs'd Father,Mother,Sister and Brother.