#14: Sleeping Ugly

Notes from a long-haul flight, and making plans to do nothing.

I write this week’s newsletter at the midpoint of a 12-hour flight to Hong Kong. I’m sitting pretzel-like, in seat 37H (aisle); the sky through the pill-shaped window is purple-pink and the cabin lights are off.

In those six hours, I’ve ingested a large orange, a cup of tomato juice, warm white wine, tomato and lentil pasta (it was that or turkey dinner), water, and a corner of dark chocolate that melted in my pocket.

After a sporty British-Asian double bill (Polite Society followed closely by Bend It Like Beckham), I swallowed one melatonin and read a chunk of East of Eden until the overhead light hurt my eyes. 

I’m listening to old Mando and Canto-pop ballads on a low volume and have a neck pillow on over my hoodie. No one is sat between 37K and me, so I’ve had the luxury of both armrests and no manspreading. But even the phlegmy older gentleman across the aisle and the baby ten rows ahead have passed out, and notwithstanding the melatonin, I’m wide awake. 

I’ve never been good at sleeping on planes, and my pre-flight green tea, bony backside, and rendering myself vulnerable in a cabin full of strangers aren’t the only obstacles to rest. As a child, I took liberties while unconscious — my parents say that I slept raising the roof, mouth wide open. An oft-repeated story of theirs involves baby me being strapped, dozing, to my mum in a flower market, before a stranger — who had apparently never laid eyes on a sleeping baby — loudly pronounced me a ‘saliva monster’ in Cantonese.