Well I said that I would continue this particular stream of thought but I never expected that I would do this because of the circumstances that arose to give me the inspiration.
And I say inspiration in a muted sense for what I am about to describe is not exactly what one would normally describe as inspirational.
Yesterday we took a jet from Heathrow to Zurich, an uneventful journey apart from the excess of £60 that I had to pay because of the stupidity of my bank blocking my card for security reasons forcing me to pay for service desk rather than e-ticket. (That's for another story though). The jet was spacious, clean and the staff were welcoming and friendly all what I have come to expect of years travelling with Swissair. As predicted we landed at Zurich on time and were transferred through to our Air Malta flight with relative ease. The staff welcomed us on board and for a local carrier the aeroplane was surprisingly modern and clean. The pilot took off with a little of an attempt to recreate a roller coaster ride but soon we were zooming over the tops of the Italian Alps and heading South for Rome then Sicily. Dinner was served and I have to say it was a rather nice combination of chicken, aubergine salad and hummus with coconut macaroon to follow and wine flowing a plenty. (Beat the hell out of Ryanair, another story)
And then it all went wrong. my daughter was sitting behind me and me and my son occupied aisle seats. Suddenly from behind there were cries of help and panic filled the cabin. Now in today's world this leads to all sorts of thoughts flowing through one's mind and I started thinking back to the earlier part of our journey when some road rage maniac in Great Hinton had tried to run us off the road (another story). Had that been a bad omen and although I'm not particularly superstitious when I fly I become increasingly thus.
As it turned out this was a medical emergency and therefore right up my street as so to speak. A call went out for any one who could help as a man was being violently sick and had gone into a serious state of confusion. By the time we had got to him though and got him out of his seat he was already unconscious and coning. His pupils were fixed and dilated pretty much by the time he was now laid in the aisle with his head in between my son and daughter. Although several rounds of CPR and defibrillation were tried (not to be taken lightly on a pressurised aircraft) the reality was that this poor chap had suffered a massive episode either coronary or cerobrovasularly.
And now my psych training kicked in as all around me I could see a vision of pure psychological trauma. My children suffering in front of my eyes and even the elderly or the tough medics assembled in shock. and spare a thought for the cabin crew, they are trained for this sort of thing but they are trained with dummies and they too were finding this difficult to handle, especially as they were helping to move the body and would have to do the clear up after we had landed.
I instructed the crew to make sure that the children particularly, and not just mine, were moved forward away from the scene, luckily we sat at the back of the aircraft in the cheap seats. There was still confusion but chaos was starting to calm down and there seemed a general air of relief with one person saying well at least it wasn't a terrorist with a bomb.
On arrival at Malta, and I've never been in a public aircraft landed so quickly, I did a final round of checking if everyone was OK, left my contact details whilst here on the island in case anyone needed to talk about things and took my family off to our home for the next week.
Today things seem a million miles apart but I'll keep in touch with this over the next few days .......to be continued
