That one time I was on a flight with Christian Slater, and then I wrote a blog post about it

Ladies and gentlemen, we begin this ‘Week in Photos’ roundup with this moody shot of me watching the planes at LAX, shortly before getting on one of them and heading home:

This photo isn’t just “moody” in the artistic sense: it’s moody in the sense that I am one moody biatch when I’m coming home after a holiday. I’m all, “don’t look at me, don’t talk to me, Ima just sit here and cry into my coffee cup at the sheer injustice of the world. Bring me a Starbucks, though. Also a Smashbox Photo Finish Primer from duty free. Then go away again, srsly.”

Seeing as some of you were kind enough to show an interest in my ‘fear of flying’ post, however, let the record show that the most interesting thing about the LA-London flight was the presence of Christian Slater, who was sitting in the very last seat in business class, meaning that every single person in our particular section of economy had to file past him to get to our seats. Or, in Terry’s case, stop directly beside him and start frantically nodding in his direction, to get my attention. Once again, I totally wouldn’t have recognised him, but for some reason, once we were all seated, Christian (I can call him that now, given that we’ve – in a very technical, and also totally misleading, sense – spent the night together) decided to get out of his seat and walk up and down the aisle right next to us, thus giving us ample opportunity to see that he was, indeed, Christian Slater, and to also give my mum ample opportunity to turn round and hiss, “IS HE THE ONE FROM BATMAN? WELL, WHERE DO I KNOW HIM FROM?” a few times.

My theory? Christian had heard a rumour that The Chicken was on board, and was hoping to get a look at him:

He was destined to be disappointed, though, because The Chicken is a private kind of guy, and he’s not impressed by movie stars. Which is good, because it’s not like he’ll be seeing any in a village of 700 people, is it?

Anyway, I did pretty well on that flight, and on the two outbound flights, so I was feeling quite smug, and like I could take on the world, until I fell at the final hurdle, by totally losing it on the London – Edinburgh connection. In my defence, I’d been awake for over 24 hours at that point, and had been flying for around 11 of those hours, so I wasn’t really bringing my A-game, you know? Also in my defence, when we got onto the plane, it immediately became clear to me that THERE WAS SOMEONE ON THE ROOF and they were TRYING TO SAW THROUGH IT WITH A CHAINSAW. Or that’s what it sounded like, anyway, and you should know here that I have been studying the sounds airplanes make for years, so I ain’t no fool. I know what the wheels sound like when they come down/go up. I know the sound of the flaperons, er, flaperoning. I know the sound of the engines kicking up a notch. AND I KNOW THE SOUND OF SOMEONE SAWING THROUGH THE FREAKING ROOF, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MAKE IT STOP.

You all think I’m exaggerating. People, I am totally not exaggerating. When I told my mum about my suspicions, she listened for a few seconds, then said brightly, “You’re right! It DOES sound like someone on the roof with a chainsaw!” Then she went back to reading about Posh and Becks, who have apparently been having some kind of drama, but unless it’s a drama of the “chainsaw-weilding-madman-on-airplane-roof” kind, I just don’t care. In vain I tried to make the people around me take The Noise seriously, but no one would. “Everyone else can hear it too,” my mum said, “So if it’s something unusual, someone will tell the pilot!” Which is all very well, but my main thought is, what if everyone is thinking the same thing? What if everyone thinks someone ELSE will tell the pilot about the chainsaw on the roof? And then NO ONE tells him, and the result is that we all plunge to our fiery deaths, just as I’ve been predicting for YEARS now?

Well, as you can see, we did not plunge to our fiery deaths. I did have a bit of a sob to myself, though, and by the end of the flight my dad wasn’t talking to me, so the flight was fairly standard, really AND I got to experience what it was like to be 13 again, so that was something, I guess. Oh, and there was no one famous on that flight. Not even Dizee Rascal or anyone.

Once we got back, the rest of the week was mostly devoted to getting over the jetlag, catching up with work, and (in my case) whining about not being in California. The weather has been beautiful: it’s been much warmer than it was during the “summer” (That’s not very warm, obviously, but the bar has been set pretty low here…), and the sunsets have been spectacular:

You’ll have to take my word for that, though, because that’s one terrible photo, but still: pretty skies, trust me on this. Pretty nice weather, too: the UK people I follow on Twitter have been all, “YAY, OCTOBER! COOL WEATHER! BOOTS AND COATS!” this week, but I’ve been wandering around with bare legs and short sleeves (Which I rarely get away with in the summer here, let alone at the start of October), which makes me wonder if I’ve accidentally slipped into some other dimension or something. I mean, I HOPE so, because when you have “cool, crisp weather” for 11.5 months of the year, it’s not exactly something to get excited about, is it? It’s always interesting to me how totally different my “two lives” are in that respect: almost everyone I follow online is currently going nuts over autumn, for instance, but I don’t know a single person in “real life” who isn’t mourning its approach, and dreading the dark, freezing days ahead.

With that said, I have to admit that unseasonably warm weather like this always feels a bit bittersweet to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been enjoying the sun, and doing my best to make the most of it, but it does have a bit of a “the condemned woman ate her last meal” feel about it. I don’t expect anyone to understand this, but I get genuinely depressed when the nights shorten and the days get colder (no, light therapy doesn’t seem to make much of a difference…), and knowing that’s just around the corner kinda makes me want to, I dunno, go outside and roll around in the sun or something, while I still can. Instead, I’ve just been making do with watching Rubin do it instead:

Always guaranteed to put a smile on my face!

 

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