The top deck of an aeroplane
Aerial escapades en route to the Wild West
What are the most memorable pisses you’ve ever had? Here are my top three:
On my first return visit to Tokyo after having lived in Japan the year before, my friend Hiro took me for something called “molecular tapas” in the restaurant on the top floor of the Mandarin Oriental. It was the most peculiar meal I have ever had — Heston-Blumenthal-meets-Dr-Frankenstein-techno-gastronomy: the “dishes” I remember were (i) a sort of mollusc you ate and which caused great, draconian plumes of steam to billow from your nostrils and (ii) a magic berry which, when you chewed it round your mouth, turned all of your taste-buds soppy and saccharine, such that you could bite into a lemon and think you were chomping on fudge. I must have turned to drink. Going to the gents I was met with the most spectacular, pan-latitudinal, pan-longitudinal, rippling, glistening view of Tokyo and all its troughs and ridges, of a sky so clear you could see the saints in heaven, and of the preening purple and green slopes of Fuji-san (when first learning Japanese I thought the -san was an honorific, like Mr., but actually it’s just mountain 山). Appreciating the de-clenching function of so pacific a vista (the Pacific a mere glance to the right, over the hand-dryers), the urinals were tightly enclosed boxes in the great panes of glass. Never was relief so relieving.
On a night train from Goa to Mumbai I partook of the somewhat basic facilities on two occasions. On the first, shunting out through the fringes of Paradise, it was fine. Lightened, Nav and I enjoyed a takeaway channa masala that was delivered to us by a guy standing at exactly the point on the platform where our cabin window shuddered to a stop, all co-ordinated in three languages between us, Nav’s mum, and a rural Maharashtra canteen who no doubt regretted singing up to the train-takeaway app. When he handed us our food, I suspect he had not been standing behind the yellow line. And speaking of which: I took my second visit to the facilities some seven hours into the journey, half an hour from Mumbai. The STENCH of the khazi had become physically manifest, ascended to this mortal plane from some putrid sewer of the darkest, cloacal reaches of Hell: it slopped wetly around on the perilous metal floor. It steamed the windows, licking its foul tongue into the corners of the evening. It took me by the throat in its pestilential claws and rotted to putrefaction my whimpering Adam’s apple. I did what I had come to do. The beast crawled on my skin, its ammonia-tang seeping into my clothes, ruffling my withering hair. I could feel it, taste it. It followed me to the cabin. It turned Naveen to yoghurt. It still has not fully left me.
I once had a slash in the White House.
But that was all until now.
Today, on a flight to San Francisco, I went upstairs on an aeroplane for the first time: they put the loos in the aeroline fish-head of the plane, just above the cockpit. Spacious! Elegant! Aerodynamic! I could have done a yoga session in there if I’d wanted.
This is probably only the third or fourth time I have been on a plane with an upstairs.
When I first went to Hong Kong, it was with Cathay Pacific in the time of 747s but, like third-class emigrants on the Titanic, they barred us from going upstairs.
My Luxembourgish mate and I were on the inaugural A380 from Paris to New York all the way back in 2010. There is no glamour like that of Air France cabin crew, nor withering scorn like theirs: I recall the celebratory vintage champagne they funnelled raffishly down our necks. I recall the celebratory foie-gras with which our grateful livers were fatted. The steaks! The Bordeaux! And I remember the premium Armagnac they brought round at the end of the meal. Babbling, mon cher ami Luxembourgeois was begging for mercy. Raw ethanol streamed from his mournful eyes, like a Catholic statuary miracle. Once a guillotinable offence no doubt, he turned down the amber Ambrosia from the font the frowning déesse held atilt for him. She looked at him, quite rightly, as if the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen ought not to apply to him. She poured it anyway and gave me the glass. Even if I’d been allowed upstairs, I wouldn’t have been able to make it.
But I was allowed upstairs today (we’re flying to California ahead of a stag do in Vegas (!)). There’s a separate air-bridge, which you trudge up like Scafell Pike. The air thins. The ceiling seems a little lower, the fuselage a little rounder. Yes, the toilets are more spacious. The wings are wider, the engines bigger. There is a grand, grand staircase, each devotional step leading to the holy of holies, the backlit plastic BA tick (they rope it off). And at 35,020ft, the clouds seem that much powderier, distantly straying across the Atlantic.
Anyway, I’m two brandies in. Time for a piss.
I love the top-deck of an aeroplane.
I wish I hadn’t starting reading this just as the sushi arrived.