The Singapore Tulip

I was dozing off to sleep in an effort to pass the twelve hour journey on our way to Singapore, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a panic stricken male air steward darting towards the telephone with the appearance of somebody who had found a bomb in his right hand trouser pocket with a two second warning!! The remaining two female stewards were leaning ominously over an aisle seat looking speechless with fear.

So with sheer natural self protective intuitive instinct, I decided to let them sweat it out for a few minutes, playing it "cool", turning to my esteemed twenty stone massive androgenic hirsuit acne grade 4, laugh a minute East German industrialist neighbouring passenger, who due to size of economy seats was definitely over the Berlin wall and camped almost on my lap, and launched a broad conversation topic which was not possible for her to answer in a monosyllable and was likely to keep her talking for at least an hour, so I said" how is the East these days?"

Sure enough she took a big deep breath and went into a very serious totally boring monologue. So I glimpsed all the way up the aisle, a good ten metres, to see how the three stricken stewards and the possible "baby" were getting on ?The multiple beads of sweat were glistening on telephonic one's forehead, and I decided to investigate the scene at "seat……. 48….aah… ".

Of course it was going to be difficult to interrupt my highly interesting travelling companion "Uta", and I excused myself while she searched frantically under our seats for her Ventolin inhaler in the middle of her most serious asthma attack brought on by overwhelming burst of emotion due to "someone" mentioning the "East". I said hurriedly "toilet ",while pointing in the general direction of my trousers, her reply was too wheezy to understand as I extracted myself from the seat and after about ten minutes I walked up the aisle (this time, without my darling loved one needless to name her of course, but to avoid any confusion, I’m referring to Liz!)

Strolling along gently, looking at the totally white, and entirely the same boring clouds for the ten millionth time, I finally reached the "action zone." Now I knew what all the fuss was about, there was an elderly man, at least eighty-eight at a low estimate, with the look of terror in his eyes normally reserved for those who are about to have a major heart attack or have a large constipated bowel motion. (or has just received his wife’s credit card bill !!)

With him it was difficult to tell which way he was going to go, as his mouth was wide open (like a large cod) but not a sound, I was momentarily tempted to tell him to hurry up and "spit it out" , but one of the three stewards shouted at the misfortune, "shut up" and he did so instantaneously, with a clatter of dentures ,saving me the job of having to slap him on the cheek ,a bit drastic seeing as we didn't even have time to have an argument! Unfortunately the closing of his jaw did not help us as he didn't have a single word of English, he was fluent in Dutch and apart from his wife, any thing he eventually muttered was "double Dutch" to us !! So, there he was flustered, , flushed, pupils wide open, hands making strange shapes, perhaps he was having his first attack of Alzheimer’s, it was not easy I swear, to figure what the hell he was up to? Anyhow amongst the confusion and the crowd which had now gathered, I noticed his missus was staying pretty quiet and sure enough she had good reason!

She was paler than a sheet, blue lips, eyes rolled toward heaven, mind you we weren't far away from that same place at the time, cruising at 35,000 ft! a mouth in the "Q sign", no sign of any breathing, not a word, need I say any more but it wasn't looking too good for the return trip!

There were several possibilities, she was in a deep sleep, nearly dead, not far off dead, definitely dead, dead for ages, overdosed on the duty free in a big way, had a major flare up with the husband and wanted to scare him, having a quiet nap, doing her yoga breathing exercises with a breath every five minutes, and of course perhaps she had something trivial like a heart attack or bad indigestion????? These were just a few ideas that the panicky stewards threw up as I stared at her pensively, of course I had my own differential, she was suffering from acute lack of fresh air or in the medical guru's terminology "hypoxic". The treatment of choice for the aforementioned condition is simple, fresh air and plenty of it !

So, as we rushed up the aisle dragging her by her overcoat , heading for the nearest emergency exit in order to stick her head out for some fresh air, she must have had a premonition the certain death was about to happen she gave one almighty cough and splutter…………..out shot a rock hard chicken nuggett with the velocity of a missile ….. and she sat up dazed looking at the "Medical Misfits" and said "Who the hell overcooked those chicken nuggetts ????"