Catching a flight is statistically safer than driving a car or even crossing the street. That’s a fact. You actually have more chance of being kicked to death by a donkey than being killed in an airplane crash. That’s another fact. Oh yes, I’ve done my research, I’m not some fool stumbling into this blindly. My eyes were wide open when I took my seat on the 20:10 from Heathrow to Chicago.

Most of the other passengers were still fucking around with the over-head lockers, while I ensured my seatbelt was securely fastened and began reading the laminated safety procedure card. I hadn’t even noticed the guy in the next seat until he coughed before speaking,

“Scared of flying?”

Innocent enough, but something about his tone made me answer with a quesion. “Are you?”

Visibly affronted, he spoke with an uppity croak. “This month alone I’ve flown to four continents, nine capital cities. I have over 70,000 air miles.”

“I’ll take that as a no then.” I replied and watched the air hostess point out the nearest exit doors. I’d have to climb over a young mother and baby but looking around me I couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be first to the door and down the inflatible slide. Overweight families and drunken geriatrics surrounded me – there would be no contest.

Over the tannoy the pilot instructed the cabin crew to prepare for take off, but the old man was still in my ear.

“It’s the take off you need to worry about. Apparently the first 8 minutes is the really crucial time. Once you’re past that its relatively risk-free.”

“Thanks your’re a real comfort.”

“I was on a flight to Amsterdam recently and the plane stalled on take off. Luckily the wheels were still out or that would have meant a crash-landing and no-doubt a multitude of fatalities.”

I considered pressing the air steward alarm button, but I could hardly get them to stop the flight because I was sat next to a know-all prick. I thought about telling them he was another shoe bomber but that just got me thinking about terrorists. As if flights weren’t bad enough already.

We had barely taken off and his tray table was down, signalling to the air hostess that he required two large whiskeys asap. He suggested I followed suit and for once I took his advice.

“It won’t guarantee your safety, but it will certainly make you less twitchy. Chin chin.” He knocked his plastic glass against mine before dispatching the first measure down his gullet in one. We digested the first in near silence before he spoke again. “You might also want to try some valium. Take two, they’re not very strong.”

The tablets he offered me in his gnarled and twsited hand did not look like standard-issue diazepam, but the alcohol had taken the edge off my hostility, and all rational thought had been left behind on the tarmac of the runway, so I accepted – swallowing both pills with the second whiskey.

More booze followed and with it more chat, even the turbulence we were experiencing didn’t effect our unexpecetd tete a tete. He was loving the captive audience, whereas I was just enjoying the distraction of getting shit-faced with a man three times my age.

An hour or so passed, and desperate to urinate I mustered the mettle get to my feet and find the toilet. I was all over the place down the isle, hanging on to headrests and banging protruding knees – a drunken bumbling oaf.

Once inside, even with my hands wedged against the cubicle walls and my arms braced out straight, I couldn’t stop myself rattling inside the metal capsule, or my brain from rattling inside my head. I only needed a piss but I dropped my jeans and underpants and took care of business from a seated position. Closing my eyes for a second, I leant my head against the sink for extra stability.

The next thing, some idiot is kicking the door.

“He’s been in there for over half an hour.”

I can hear them talking about me. Time to leave. After wrestling with the concertina door for a few awkward moments I was finally free and even managed a saulte of apology to the grumbling queue.

The plane was dark now, with only a few die-hard reading lights left on. Almost immediately some more rough turbulence activated the ‘fasten seat belts’ sign and I struggled to find my seat in some hellish version of musical chairs.

Nothing looked familiar, in fact the whole plane seemed bigger, even the layout seemed different. I could have sworn I was in a window seat on the left, but they were all occupied. And the old guy was nowhere.

I dropped down in the nearest empty spot, but hadn’t even found the seat belt before my neighbour leant over,

“Hey, my wife’s sitting there.”

I jumped up all apologies and moved forward, before flopping into another vacant seat. Waiting a few seconds for any protest from next door but it never came, so I pulled the blanket up over me me and slipped the zorro face mask over my eyes.

The eternal drone of the engines melted any anxiety and I was soon drfiting off again. It didn’t last long though, my shoulder was being shaken by a gorilla grip.

“Sir sir, excuse me.”

Without lifting the mask I protested fake innocence. “What? I’m trying to sleep here.”

“Sir please, the mask, take it off.”

I figured as long as I couldn’t see them, I was invisible – so the eye mask stayed in place. Sadly I hadn’t banked on them taking matters into their own hands. With one swfit tug, I was the villan in a Scooby-Doo cartoon, unmasked by Shaggy and Thelma. An elderly woman was standing beside a pissed-off male flight attendent.

“Sir, can you please return to your seat.”

“Jesus. If I could find it, I would. I fell asleep in the toilet and when I woke up everything had changed. Its almost like its a different plane.”

“A different plane?” he repeated sacrastically.

The commotion had begun to attract attention. An obese man with an eye patch turned to observe.

“I mean, look at him! I would have remembered him! But I don’t.” I wasn’t helping my case.

The exchange soon developed into a bun fight. I’m ashamed to say that I became hystrical, as I grew increasingly convinced that I had woken up on a completely different plane. The old woman whose seat I had stolen, began proding me in the chest with her wrinkled digits. While the air steward huffed and puffed but was essentially unsure of his next step. Even that freak with the eye-patch stuck his oar in. And with all the hubbub, the radius of disruption grew steadily until almost everyone on board was either yelling at me to go back to my seat or tutting loudly, one young punk even through his complimentary pillow at me. It is incredible how swiftly a civilised group can become a braying mob.

This ugly scene could well have continued for the entire flight had a woman with a baby not wandered past. She had no problem surmising my predicament and thankfully had the oh-so-simple resolution.

“Your seat is in the next cabin.”

Everyone stopped. I looked at her blankly, while she forced another burp out of the baby hanging over her shoulder.

“You’re in the seat behind us, I’ve been awake all night and did wonder where you’d gone. Your dad’s been snoring for hours.”

I realised my mistake and felt at least 30 pairs of eyes on me, all thinking – you twat.

As I made my way slowly down the aisle, I muttered feebly, to no-one inparticular, “He’s not my dad.” And prayed the engines would die and send me, the plane and the entire cast of characters in this tortuous episode, spiralling into freefall. Crashing with a beautiful explosion into the middle of the Atlantic. But as previously stated, the chances of that happening...