Where rivers meet - the Med!

All air attendants are formal and frigid creatures,
no matter what airline you are flying with,
no matter what their nationalities are,
let alone their ages

I was out to melt and defrost and crack them,
but how and why?

The WHY bit was easy. I had been bored
to death as usual even with this relatively
short flight, and as everthere was

nothing much to kill time by in my confined space.
I do not read books in flight nor do I much
listen to musics. And I abhore movies and games.

We had been out over the Med and
I could see wakes all over the calm
surface of the sea right down there.
I could even see boats and ships!

Somehow, we had not shot up into the stratsphere.
We were not doing an intercontinental,
if you come to think about it.

That I could see wakes must have
meant calm seas. I was therefore
quite excited about the prospect of
fishing off the Island.

I had brought my own primitive, but
devastatingly effective fishing gear
that I had made at home.

On our way out there I had seen the European
Alps, or so I had assumed, but then it could not
have been. The onboard flight chart clearly
indicated otherwise,

that we were flying over Marseille en route,
where my wife had been holidaying
with our children.

No, I had not seen the Alps, which must have been
way out somewhere down in that direction.
However, that snow capped mountainous

region off Marseille, immediately to
the north east must have been a bad omen
to Hannibal and his lot with all those
thirty odd elephants.

You clearly do not wish to waste them,
not so early on during your millitary campaign, if you
knew that you were going to cross
the Alps into where the Romans were waiting.

Books say that they went deep inland in Gallia
and that sheer mass of it, falling sharply
into the Med

must have been the reason, to turn away from
coastal areas, away from hot pursuits,
trying desperately to blend into dark forests.

My moments of thoughts were interrupted by
sudden wailing and shreaks of a small baby
girl who was seated
two rows down with her father.

He did not seem capable of coping
with his child, or even qualified to do so.
You know how annoying it can be with

crying babies. Air attendants were uniformly
conniving at the state of affairs. Oh, yes, they
were all pretty Malties, except that

they did not seem to do anything
about it, not wanting to, perhaps.

I was therefore about to take the matter
into my own hands, but then, to my surprise
her crying came to an abrupt end. Finito!

I actually had some tricks in mind I was going to
play on the girl. So, I decided to savage one of the
attendants instead, who came down my way.

M. Excuse me, Ms! Did you see him?
Did you see him just now?

A. I beg your pardon, sir?

She was being amply formal, with a very stern
expression on her pretty and slightly Sun tanned face,
and that is exactly what you would expect
of them,

after so many hundred hours of solid training,
to be formal and yet friendly. However, under
these rather abnormal circumstances,

not explicit in their training manuals, perhaps,
she was obviously confused as to how to take
control of this situation.

She did not know how to react to this
strange and perhaps crazy Oriental gentleman,
probably to the extent of assuming that
my linguistic ability was causing some problems.

(Why the hell are you supposed to be
seeing anybody new on board or outboard, anyway?)

M. He was out there just now, flying with us!

I pointed to the window.

She was reasonable up top and probably was
in her mid twenties. She was very quick to realise, however,
what I was on about!

Her ice cold face melted
in a billionth of a second into that of
a pretty woman of her age.

Her subsequent reaction was something I had not
expected, something quite extraordinary!!!.
In fact, you were not supposed to
do anything as naughty as that
with your guests!

She smacked me right on my head and then nudged me
hard with her elbow with a big and rupturous
smile, which was highly contageous and
bordering on a laughter!

That precisely was the moment I had cracked an air
attendant while on duty. Yes, she did bring me an
extra glass of champagne to celebrate the occasion.

We had not shared that moment with anybody else.
After all nobody could have overheard our fleeting
conversation in such a short span of time.

It probably was all over within 15 seconds from
the onset of it all.

Our captain was blaring out something about the local weather, no
significant air turbulance ahead. I was now rapidly
approaching the days of fishing in the Med.