“What’s a culture?”

“It’s a group of people who are stuck with each other.”

​

A sharp, authoritative clearing of the throat, diverted my eyes from page 81 to those of a woman, seated to my left, whose stare had me almost convinced I’d deliberately killed her dog or something.

‘Any drinks or snacks?’ I heard a voice, with a German twang, Austrian maybe, announce from behind. The woman on the left began impatiently listing a variety of alcoholic beverages, exaggeratingly straining her neck as if my presence of being in the middle seat was inconveniencing her well being. Miniature plastic bottles containing liquids of differing colours glugged over shards of broken ice; red Campari bled into an aqueous sallow yellow, subsequently shot through with another liquor, a clear substance that pirouetted in consummation. Dry vermouth over sweet Verona.

Her husband…Partner…? Cousin…? Lover…? positioned to my right, seemed equally fractious and who on vague inspection physically appeared not too dissimilar from Nigel Farage, began to huff, like some strung-out administrator, whose pay check certainly wasn’t worth the extent of such generous emotion.

The charge was static in 32B, the tension palpable. As if the middle seat wasn’t claustrophobic enough, they had both seized control of our shared arm rests. So I sat there, obediently, like a reluctant Switzerland, and pondered death. Laurence Rickels once said ‘the word mourning is no longer adequate, we should call it the audio and video broadcast of improper burial.’

I came across that phrase in Berlin, shortly before Kamil called, digressing, into an unfortunate story about the girlfriend of his flatmate, whose relative was recently, at the time, in Paris, house sitting to look after a dog who had actually died. When she called the people that deal with this kind of thing, they advised her to bring the dog to the place that adequately handles such situations. The problem, however, was that the dog was a Labrador, a big one. So she put the corpse in a suitcase, and when confronted with the task of transporting the heavy, rigid animal up an ascending elevator on the metro, a man stopped to help and asked what made the load so unwieldy. ‘Oh, computer equipment.’ She nonchalantly replied. By the time they had reached the final step, the guy had bolted, flying into the distance - with the suitcase.

The plane began to jolt and a tannoy announcement instructed all passengers to fasten their seatbelts - nature had apparently picked up on the friction too. Although, I’m relatively fond of the adrenaline turbulence summons, the surrendering to gravity momentarily suspends the mind of responsibility, like scuba driving at an advanced level, or falling in love, perhaps.

Glancing to my left, I noticed she had turned slightly…green. Yes. Green. A pale sage. The eyelashes clumped together in a tar of black kohl quietly conjuring my sense of compassion. That was until her bony elbow sharply jabbed into my ribcage, immediately giving way to my intuitively fantasising about stabbing her with my EpiPen. A somewhat ridiculous retaliation to the whole oppressive scenario, considering reality is only ever really, what you can get away with. Moments later, I watched her eyes widen in panic from the prospect of vomiting over the lifejacket instructions laminating the back of 31A.

Meanwhile, husband, to my right, partner, cousin, lover, whatever, had conveniently drifted off. His head, performing absurdly monumental yet seemingly gratifying wide-arced lunges, thrusting itself out into the aisle and back in again as if mimicking a conductor of an orchestra, attempting to bring a unified vision to the imperfectly synchronised yelps of varying passengers feeling their stomachs plunge into oblivion. Apparently, nothing in this situation was particularly amenable, there was no quick exit.

​

“What’s a culture?”

“It’s a group of people who are stuck with each other.”

“Like a family?”

“Yes, but bigger. Without a house. Spread all over the place.”