Blooming holidays!

You’ve decided where to go, booked flights, organised hotels, packed and weighed your bags, sent the cat to longsuffering relatives, persuaded the dog to take up residence in a home with bars across the windows, and all you have to do is make sure you have something decent to read. Simple? No, definitely not!

To Pisa, Italy, I brought three books: one was ok, the second was awful, and the third I had read before (a ghastly mistake) so I set off for the largest bookstore in town. The English section comprised two sets of shelving in which Charles Dickens and Dan Brown featured among the usual chick-lit and dross of the lowest order; I chose the former and spent the remainder of my holiday with Hard Times tucked under my oxter (not a bad choice as it turned out. I can now visualise Miss Haversham at the table of her wedding feast and the genial Pip as he grew up with a cast of the strangest characters). Note to self: plan better next time.

Albuquerque, New Mexico, with five books in tow, none of which I could read on the flight as I was seated next to Bill for the long haul with whom I talked non-stop, laughed, watched the same movie, and left in Chicago with a nod of regret. No sooner landed than I headed for Borders that was full of luscious temptation that I didn’t resist; next was Barnes & Noble, another house of sin for the likes of me. More books to read but still I didn’t manage a single page due to (a) the time difference that had me in bed by eight; (b) so many relatives dying to catch up on old times; (c) the view from the back garden of humming birds flitting around the feeding table; (d) the wonderful dry heat that did me a power of good. I eventually managed to get stuck into Henning Mankell who kept me highly entertained with his grumpy detective, Wallander (who could do with a good holiday himself), and a bloody crime to be solved by fair means or foul.

My flight home was just as fortuitous with Harry, another of Chicago’s sons, for company who helped me carry my suitcase, bursting with unread books, to a waiting bus.

Next week I’m off to Marbella with three gals from the book club for seven days of fun, fun and more fun. We’ve agreed to take two books each to share after reading so basically that’s one book a day if all goes according to plan. It should be enough, but then again, what if none of them are any good??? Oh the trials and tribulations of being too far away from my favourite bookshops and that steady supply of literary surprises growing like sturdy trees beside my bed, on the sideboard, near the couch and strewn on the hall table.

Having a good book to read is like a security blanket for bibliophiles without which we’d turn into nasty, spiteful, frustrated bores longing for an English box of Cornflakes off which to read (as if we needed to know) the ingredients, nutritional value (ha!), country of origin, and other useless information. Reading is reading when it boils down to it and going mad in a world without books doesn’t bear thinking about.

Flying for a Living

Last month, a jetliner overshot its destination by 150 miles with 144 passengers on board. As flight 188 cruised at an altitude of 37,000ft, its two pilots said that they simply "lost track of time". The official story was that they were distracted during an extended discussion of crew scheduling – for over an hour!!!

And I thought I’d heard it all. As far as I’m concerned this lame excuse ranks up there with, "the dog ate my homework". I heard someone on the radio say that today’s planes all but fly themselves so there’s no need for human intervention 90% of the time, so I can well believe that the two pilots were deep in some activity other than fiddling with the dials: knitting perhaps? The trip from San Diego to Minneapolis may have been like the journey a 46a bus takes from Dun Laoghaire to Dublin City Centre: repetitive and generally uneventful, but I do like my driver to keep his mind on the job 100% of the time. Of course, they could have been writing a novel, a block-busting tale of scandal and intrigue in the skies.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a young Frenchman who had two passions: flying and writing and he excelled at both (I’m sure he didn’t try to do both at the same time, mind you). He wrote novels that were full of perilous adventure and aviation. In 1935 he crashed in the Libyan Sahara desert along with his navigator as they were attempting to fly from Paris to Saigon for prize money of 150,000 francs. They were found after four days by a Bedouin on a camel, dehydrated and hallucinating; he drew on this experience to write his fable for adults, The Little Prince.

In 1944, on Saint-Exupéry’s final wartime assignment for Air France, he was shot down over the Mediterranean. An unidentified body was found several days later, presumed but never verified beyond doubt, to be that of the pilot and author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Our two pilots from Northwest Airlines may well be fired from their jobs, pending a thorough investigation. I don’t wish them any harm but I would like to think that next time I’m soaring through the clouds in a glorified tin can, my safety is uppermost in the minds of my assigned pilots. After all, I have a novel in me yet bursting to get out and land on a page near you!