The trouble began with the flight. The early evening chartered flight from Edinburgh to Valetta was advertised as non-stop. As soon as we were on board, however, the pilot announced that the plane would be making a detour to Glasgow Airport to pick up some more passengers. If that wasn’t bad enough, we were required to disembark when we arrived in Glasgow and wait in the departure lounge for the best part of two hours before boarding again. The dozen or so passengers who joined the flight in Glasgow were all young and noisy. They were also as drunk as skunks, but that didn’t stop the cabin crew from continuing to ply them with drink… well, not until the plane hit a horrendous storm. By the time we had flown through the storm and the plane had stopped rocking from side to side, empty bottles and cans were rolling up and down the aisle alongside a river of vomit.
When our flight-from-Hell eventually landed at Valetta Airport in the early hours of the morning, needless to say our scheduled helicopter ride over to Gozo was long gone. We and a handful of other sober, weary passengers, also destined for Gozo, were led to some seats in a corner of the Arrivals Hall and told to wait there until another helicopter flight could be arranged. Among those waiting was a young woman from Englandshire. Clad in a flowing robe, she was one of those hippy-hippy, happy-happy, chatty-chatty types, who saw it as her anointed role to cheer up the other passengers with some spirit-of-the-Blitz small talk. Alison, who was never her best when travelling, sat stony-faced, seething, too angry for words. At one point, I got up to go to the gents. As I walked across the Hall, I saw out of the corner of my eye Happy-Happy making a beeline for my seat, no doubt planning to jolly along Alison. “Guid luck wi’ that, hen,” I said to myself. But when I returned, my seat was empty and Happy-Happy was nowhere to be seen.
“Well, that was short 'n' sweet. What was she efter?” I asked.
“She wanted to know if this would be my first time on a helicopter.”
“Oh, aye. And what did you say?”
“I told her to fuck off,” Alison replied, cracking a smile.
(By the way, the statue in the photo is of St Indrija, Patron Saint of Fishermen. And of Scotland, of course.)