Letter From Belgrade

Every month, Scots crime fiction author Douglas Lindsay sends off another letter from Belgrade and I get to laugh my proverbial ass off. This month’s letter is no exception.

Tuesday

A couple of weeks ago, on the first leg of my journey to the States, from Belgrade to London on JAT, I made a vital breakthrough in passenger comfort which I will now share with you, at no extra cost. For years I have been plagued by being a big scaredy pants the minute turbulence started up, no matter how gentle. There's something about a massive hunk of metal being jiggled about in the sky like an autumn leaf in the breeze, that reduces me to blubber. Nothing helps. Reading a book, thinking about sports statistics, engaging someone in gentle conversation, heavy sedation, large alcohol intake, it's all useless. And of course, paying three thousand pounds extra to fly first class makes no difference, you still get turbulence up there, you know. However, at some point flying over Germany, I cracked it. The turbulence started up, the plane began to wobble and bobble and I began to freak out in the usual way. So I turned to my wee girl and I jiggled about in an exaggerated manner. And that was it, my moment of epiphany. That when you yourself jiggle about in the seat, you don't actually notice that the plane's doing the same thing. And if the turbulence gets really bad, it almost feels like it's you who's controlling it, that your movement in the seat is making the plane sway, as if you were in a cable car. I know what you're thinking, you're thinking that that sounds just about the stupidest thing you've read since seven o'clock this morning. But it works. Of course, in the yin-yang scheme of things that dominates the fabric of the world, the downside is that you look like a complete muppet. If you've no kid with you, then you're stuffed, and even the blessing of a kid sitting next to you is only going to give you about thirty seconds before she starts staring at you strangely and telling the other passengers that she's an unaccompanied minor. However, the yang is that it works. Keep it in mind the next time you hit clear air.

Warning: The Jiggle Technique is not guaranteed to save you if your plane crashes into the side of a mountain.

May you have no doubt that Lindsay's books are freaking brilliant!