THE DEEP POOL --OCTOBER 2006  

Taking a train from the centre of the Norwegian city of Trondheim on Sunday 1 st October to the airport. The train flows along the eastern bank of the broad fjord on a mild afternoon of pastel skies and grey/blue dead calm water. On little silver grey sand beaches families sit eating sandwiches or push jaunty red wooden boats into the water for an afternoon of messing about on the fjord. I get talking to an oldish smartly dressed woman who is drinking in the beautiful vista as if she's just recovered her sight. She explains to me that she lives in a valley in southern Norway which is so steep-sided that they have no view at all except that of solid grey perpendicular rock, so when she visits her sister, like now, she just can't get enough of being able to see so far into the distance. For me this particular coastal journey is so uncannily like the train line that runs along the shore of the great Scottish sea loch, Loch Etive, on the way to the town of Oban that it fills me with complex conflicting feelings, and so I appreciate having someone to talk to. We stop at the small town of Hell and have a laugh about this, as everyone does round these parts. I say goodbye at the airport stop and shortly thereafter the day becomes a little too interesting.

   In a kind of open plan airport bar where I'm watching a comically violent football match between Alesund and Star, I have noticed a somewhat strange couple who look to be in their late forties. The woman is voluptuous with a wild bob of black hair and the worn countenance of an Icelandic trawlerwoman (Trawlerwoman), if there are such persons. She's with a smallish geezer who is wearing a kind of psychedelic T-shirt which is nevertheless all about Arsenal football club (‘the Gooners'), and a pork pie hat (Porkpie) with pink shades perched on them. He's tough in a wiry kind of way that always makes me instinctively nervous, but they are both on a kind of beery high of good feeling towards their fellow persons. Also, although they are Norwegian, they speak impeccable English in a stream of conversations they're having on mobile phones with friends in the UK who they will be seeing later. This tells me that they will be on the Stansted flight, same one as me. I catch myself thinking that if they carry on boozing the way they're currently doing, they're going to be a mess by the end of the flight. The woman keeps taking a bottle of whisky out of a duty free bag, and although she doesn't open it she waves it around like it's a trophy head of a sworn enemy whilst making weird porn star-style murmuring noises of anticipation.

   We're flying with an airline called Norwegian which doesn't do seat reservations, which really suits Norwegians, who, much as I sincerely love them, have a lack of interest in the protocol of queuing that borders on the pathological. There again, I know I've got a problem with this – as I get older I find myself being increasingly outraged when people don't observe the niceties of who goes first in public situations. In fact, if I was twins, I'd never be able to shit because we'd constantly be going – ‘after you – no, I insist, after you…' Anyway, I think the point I'm making is that I make a mental note to sit as far away as possible from these two crackers – just in case.

   However, come boarding time, they are nowhere to be seen, so I can't watch where they sit, and park myself elsewhere. I manage to get an aisle seat at the back of the plane – the flight is only half full anyway so I forget about it and carry on reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Suddenly there is a jagged hubbub at the back of the plane as the couple finally arrive, last to board, and sit down with maximum fuss exactly opposite me, the guy sitting in the adjacent aisle seat. They try to order booze immediately and are nonplussed when told they will have to wait by a tough dude of a woman flight attendant who likes like Julie Driscoll's no–nonsense mum.

‘There will be a full service when we are airborne' they are told in English as they have queried in English. They then switch to Norwegian to continue the conversation, or argument as it is becoming, then switch back to English for the next sentence. This alone is pissing the flight attendant right off. A very tough leather-jacketed bullet headed good-looking-but-dangerous English bloke (Bullethead) is sitting at the window seat in their row, and is fascinated by these two, whom he draws into conversation in no time at all. I just get on with my book, but by the time we've been in the air for about ten minutes I notice that these three have struck up a real rapport, and that another woman sitting in front of Bullethead has joined the fray. It turns out that she's actually WITH Bullethead but is unaccountably not SITTING with him. There is a sudden air of conspiracy amongst all four of them, voices subdue, and they glance round theatrically to see if they are being paid attention, which they certainly are by now, as they are becoming the Nutters On The Plane. Their mood changes again and Porkpie, Trawlerwoman and Bullethead start pretending that they are looking out of the window at something really interesting outside. Porkpie is standing up, shielding Trawlerwoman and Bullethead from our view in a clumsy way as they all crane to see outside. We're flying through thick grey cloud and there's absolutely nothing to see, so this makes everyone else more and more curious – looks are exchanged all round. I suddenly understand what is happening – Trawlerwoman has got her tits out for the benefit of Bullethead and to the delight of Bullethead's lady friend in the seat in front. Sho is kneeling on her seat, watching and sniggering horribly.

   The pretence of looking out of the window rapidly deteriorates into bouts of raucous cackling, Porkpie falls over into the other two, causing huge bellowing mirth and loud swearing – ‘aaaahhhhh FUUUUCCCKKKKinell!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!' etc They're going too far, so Flight Attendant arrives and in a tone of icily polite disgust asks them to sort themselves out and calm down. They all subside for a while but amuse themselves by swapping stories of sexual antics past – they're some kind of swinger kindred spirits, and to my amazement, a tiny Japanese flight attendant who appears to have totally missed this entire scene and its implications serves them a whole heap of booze at booze time – red wine, whisky and Coke – a disturbing combination in my experience.

   An hour into the flight and all four of them are a mess, but the Norwegians are shouting their heads off about god alone knows what and occasionally telling other people, including me to fuck off when we look at them. Well, actually, fellow Norwegian passengers increasingly seem to know what they're on about as they keep looking round at the Norgie Nutters in amazement and shock. Flight Attendant has finally had enough and comes over to give Trawlerwoman a heavy talking to. Trawlerwoman is totally unimpressed and just shouts at her in a jeering tone. The English couple are loving every moment of it, but distancing themselves from the action, gently taking Trawlerwoman by the arm and explaining that she maybe should be a little quieter. Flight Attendant loses the battle of words and her temper so badly that she repeatedly stamps off down the plane, then surges back as Trawlerwoman shouts even louder – she's making it worse. Suddenly the plane hits some pretty serious turbulence, the seat belt signs are on, and you have to hold your drink to stop it spilling. Trawlerwoman decides that she needs to go to the toilet at this point. Flight Attendant reappears in battle mode and manhandles Trawlerwoman back to her seat and sort of throws her into it – Porkpie takes exception to this and starts to get up to remonstrate on behalf of his chick. All four flight attendants gather round the party and really let them have it about the danger we're all in because of the turbulence, and how they MUST SIT DOWN NOW AND FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS NOW AND KEEP THEM FASTENED UNTIL THE TURBULENCE HAS PASSED. Porkpie and Trawlerwoman finally glean that things are going fairly wrong and that there are issues beyond their need to shout at everyone. However, Porkpie now makes a big mistake and gets Flight Attendant's arm in a grip and won't let go while blathering on at her. Flightie is enraged and tells him that he is assaulting her and unless he stops he will be arrested at Stansted. Porkie's too far gone to comprehend and just slackly stares at her while holding her arm. Flightie suddenly wrenches her arm free with real force, smacking me in the side of the head with her elbow as she does so. She doesn't even notice she's done this, but Porkie does, and for the first time he really focuses on me and the meaning of my existence in his life.

   The turbulence ended and then Porkie decided to go to the toilet which was just behind me. In order to get up, he leaned across and braced himself against my shoulder, fell from side to side and finally made it into the cubicle where he had a piss whilst making a kind of ‘wrooaaarrrr' sound of royal relief. He hadn't shut the door and suddenly came flying out backwards and slid down the bulkhead opposite. Trawlerwoman got up to help him up and fell down too. They finally struggled to their feet and wobbled back to their seats muttering and swearing. Porkie braced himself against my shoulder again in order to sit down. I didn't particularly mind this: I've been around enough drunk people to just think ‘oh well'…Unfortunately Porkie's hand slipped off my shoulder and he took a painful looking forwards header, his head going ‘bnunk' as it connected with the floor. Flightie stormed up yet again and helped him to his feet. By now the plane was making its final approach to Stansted, so Flightie was frantic to get Porkie sitting down and seatbelted. This wasn't helped by Trawlerwoman remembering that she too needed a piss, and trying to squeeze past Flightie and Porkie as they tried to get Porkie in his seat. Bullethead then wound the whole fracas up by suddenly yelling ‘Aw come on! – let ‘er go to the toilet for fucksake – Jesus!' Flightie then stood over them, pushing them back down every time they tried to stand up until they accepted they weren't going to be standing up at this point in the proceedings.

   Porkie seemed to remember my part in his downfall, the hand slipping of my shoulder. He drool-gazed at me for a while, then leaned over and punched me on the shoulder, not hard, but hard enough – I gave him a look. He punched me again, no harder, but it couldn't go on.

‘Could you please stop that' I said firmly, putting my book down. He whacked me again – I asked him to stop it again.

‘Why' he asked.

‘Because if you don't I'm gonna fucking well kill you inside the airport – THAT's why' I said with deepest venom catching his raised arm by the wrist and twisting his arm round. By now we were nearly landing and Flightie, behind us, shouted ‘Listen, don't bother with him – we'll take care of him in a minute'.

I was glad she said this, because I was quickly entering a kind of terminal zone where another Jackie takes over and doesn't care at all about consequences. Unexpressed anger is a common problem and I've got my share, in fact I've bought nearly half the company. Sensing that Flightie would intervene no further until we landed I continued to hold Porkie's wrist in a fierce grip while staring at him with my full bore hatred look. I could tell he couldn't even really remember what it was all about or what was really happening, just that his wrist hurt and that it was me that was making it hurt.

We touched down with quite a bang and I still wouldn't let him go. His mates were all cheering like Americans do when the plane lands – I finally threw his arm at him but kept on looking at him. He was quite miserable now but had also passed into a zone where he simply didn't know what was going on anymore, but that it seemed to entail one godawful fuckup.

   It was time to do the standing up thing, but Flightie re-appeared and wouldn't let the swinging four leave, or even stand up. She then turned to me and said ‘I need you to stay as well sir and give a statement to the police'.

This caused a lot of consternation among the swingers – Bullethead tried to get past the Norgies, but Flightie told him he'd be staying too.

‘It's fuck all to me with me sister' he snarled, thus demonstrating that was something to do with him. Plainclothes and armed police men and women were now weaving up the plane towards us – the lower end of the plane had not fully appreciated how out of hand things had got up our end, but now there was a tremendous sense of occasion, with people deciding not to leave but stay and watch the action, others desperately trying to get away in case the plane took off again and crashed into the Diana memorial garden in Kensington Gardens.

   The lead plainclothes copper listened to Flightie for a while and I could see her pointing me out as somebody who had been assaulted. She was saying that I had acted with commendable restraint, whilst restraining Porkie no end. My chest swelled with pride. Trawlerwoman decided to make a pre-emptive strike, got to her feet and shouted at the lead copper – ‘this fucking bitch wouldn't let me have a piss, and I STILL need one!'

‘Yeah, let her have a fuckin' piss shouted Bullethead, not one of life's quick learners.

Lead copper pushed through to me – ‘you all right sir? I said yeah I was fine, Porkie just punched my arm a few times, so I restrained him without hurting him, mainly because I didn't know if the conflict was going to escalate. ‘See your passport please?' he asked, letting me know he hadn't yet officially bought into my version of events. He passed the passport to woman copper who started dictating my passport number into a phone.

‘Do you KNOW these people? He asked. Bullethead shouted over that HE didn't know them either. Lead copper gave him an uncompromising stare – ‘I'll get to you in a minute sir – could you stay silent till then please?' It doesn't look like much written down, but Bullethead had finally come round to the full dreadful potential of their situation, and slumped back in his seat.

I said no I didn't know any of them although I'd noticed them in the bar at Trondheim.

Lead copper nodded – ‘Based on what I'm hearing do you think you'll want to press charges?' I said no – I was still four hours from home and all I wanted was a curried cauliflower pie at Waterloo station. At this he palely smiled – ‘Anything?' he asked his colleague who had finished processing my passport.  

‘Nothing – he was in Canada last year'. Eh?

‘You're free to go sir –thanks for your help; but you' he said turning to Porkpie and friends – ‘are going nowhere because you can't even stand up can you? – so you're all coming with us, even if we have to carry you off this plane'.

I was moving down the aisle by now with my carrier bag full of Troika (excellent cult Norwegian chocolate – makes you go ‘what the fuck?' when first you taste it) when I heard Bullethead's voice one last time. He was trying to drop his girlfriend in it, the one in the row of seats in front of him.

‘And where do you think YOU'RE goin?' – for a start you haven't got a front door key!' The charm of the man.

   I got home at midnight and took Basil (small white dog) for a walk. His pal, Harry died five weeks ago, and he's been lonely ever since. We sat on a bench in the gentle night rain by the allotments and I told him everything was gong to be all right, and that we'd get him a little friend in a week or so. He ate some grass, then sat quietly looking down the road towards the village.

jl