102. The Plane

I'm sitting on a plane. The seats that surround me are blue, and the one directly in front of me is too close for comfort. The average age on this flight appears to be rather young, as all I can hear are young children chatting, shouting and giggling away, accompanied by the sound of Mario kart and the rumble of the plane. My mother sits on my left, Reading, her eyes look tired and her face is a little pale with the cold that she seems to have befriended. As she reads she turns each page as if it was made of gold, her dainty hands like spiders. A trolley travels down the central isle, ever so often meeting a person coming the other way, a manoeuvre that only an anorexic would be able to complete, so a queue forms.
My gaze turns to the window; I look out, almost blinded by the glare of the sun reflecting off the cloud. A black bag sits at my feet, made out of leather and has two straps, one short and identically styled, and when the other strap is out of view makes it look like a designer nosebag. The second strap is much longer, and made out of canvas with a pink stripe. The contents are what you'd expect from a piece of hand luggage. An iPod touch, phone, purse; issue of vogue and two paperback books. These two books are distinctly different; one is large, pattered with a decorative cover advertising a prize it has won. The second is small, black with a picture of a vampire on the front. It is teenage fiction, easy to read with a simple storyline designed specifically for the minds of teenage girls. It's not a complex book, not one that will have needed much research, the places described are entirely fictional and the book never designed to be realistic. The other has a complex and interesting plot, contains detailed description of the placed concerned, talks of art, science, religion and politics, shortlisted for the man booker prize.
As I sit here, the irritating sound of the child behind me's rattle creeps up on my nerves, like a tiger. The sound wanders around my head and leaves me dreading each innocent shake. My mother has fallen asleep, her book now stowed in the pocket in front of her. The child has dropped its rattle, it lets out a small whelp of displeasure and the mother promptly returns the irritating object to the child, the shaking continues.
A queue of people has formed behind the trolley, either trying to return to their seats or getting up to the loo. A small child stands at the end of my row; he is a young boy and is faced with the behind of the man serving from the trolley. The boy is beginning to get impatient. His mother looms down on him from behind with a gleam in her eye, she is proud of her son it seems, and looking forward to the holiday at the end of her flight. The boy, being young and naive toward polite practice in his current position looks up at the man, and says the only thing he understands to be entirely correct, 'excuse me, please' his voice winey with childhood innocence. The flight attendant is dealing with a customer and doesn’t hear the boy. The boy looks up at the man as he is ignored, he looks straight at me as I watch him, then up at his mother who is looking the other way. He takes his small hand out of his pocket and pokes the flight attendant three times in the bottom. The flight attendant is startled, turns around, and looks straight over the Childs head. He glances down at the boy and chuckles a nervous laugh. He politely asks the queue to move backwards to the next available place for passing. The boy beams a cheeky grin as his mother scoots him off.
I smile to myself, what a sweet little boy. It’s about an hour into the 4 hour flight; I’ve read most of my book and listened to my IPod. Although bored I am filled with a wonderful sense of content. I sit and stare out the window, and consider this feeling in honesty. There really is nothing for me, personally to be sad about. I’m so lucky; everything seems to go right for me. I’m entirely normal. My family are all well, my parents still together, my brother happy, and my friends all as content as me it seems. Also, I’m off on holiday. A week of sailing in Greece, The weather forecast has promised a week of sunshine, and the wind is good. It’s a package holiday and during the day, I and my brother will be in groups with people our age. Although this means we will see little of each other and our parents, this is not necessarily a bad thing. We get to spend the week with people our age and make new friends.
A man sits four rows behind me. He is tall, so the closeness of the nearest blue seat is more uncomfortable for him. He sits calmly but there is an agitated look about his face, he defiantly does not like, or have children. He’s on his own on the plane and a book sits in his lap, Dan Browns much discussed latest novel, He’s not enjoying it, it seems as he is yet to read more than a page without replacing it on his lap. He gazes out if the window, watching the light glide through the clouds, and illuminate them in various different shades of deep red, it is evening, and the sun is setting.
A black bag also sits at his feet, I never saw the contents of this bag, I imagined it contained similar to mine, and everyone else’s on the flight. A small innocent boy is scooted past the end of the row, the man looks at him with distaste, he is whining to his mother about having sticky hands and his high pitched voice is irritating.
The trolley leaves the isle and the boy runs up, tripping onto his face. He rights himself and there is a second where he stares into space, deciding whether to burst into tears or get up. His mother decides for him, picks him up and dusts him off in one loving swoop.
The trolley re-enters the isle laden with aeroplane dinner, it travels down the aisle, and the attendant hands it out. The stench of the food creeps down the carriage before the cart, it is not appetizing. Although nutritious, the meal and its smell are foul.
I stare down into what has been put in front of me. What looks like a takeaway tray with hot food in it, and a tired looking fruit salad sit there? At least it is food I think to myself, and dig in. It doesn’t taste so bad. My mother’s opinion is not quite the same however, you can almost see her nose turn up at as she feels back the foil. She doesn’t even try the hot meal, she nibbles at the fruit salad and but eventually turns that away too.
The Dan Brown novel continues to sit on the man’s lap as his dinner arrives, once the kart has moved off and the people sitting next to him have begun to eat, he stands, placing his meal on the floor. He slips a small brown wallet from the inside of his bag into his pocket. He squeezes past the two women in his row, who look at each other in disgust. Why would he pick such an inconvenient time to get up? Many faces turn and watch him as he walks down the Aisle to the toilet. His limp is embarrassing. That’s why he chose such an inconvenient time to get up, when everyone else had something to look at, when he wouldn’t be noticed as much. His limp caused him to walk far slower than normal, which just lengthened his embarrassment.
He entered the toilet, locked it, and sat down. He took the small brown wallet out of his pocket. It contains a small plastic brick, plastic as so not to be detected on route to the plane.
My mother and I were sat next to an old couple, the like of whom I’m not sure I’d ever seen. Mum had had a short conversation with them, it was their 70th wedding anniversary, and they were going for a romantic weekend away, they must have been in their eighties. Yet as they sat there, hand in hand, side by side, chatting, I don’t think I’d ever seen two people so in love. They reminisced about their 70 years together, and talked about ‘New fangled’ things. The man in the couple had recently bought an iPod for his wife. They discussed how they thought the touch screen worked as if it was something alien.
Behind me a woman sat next to a man. They’d never met before. They talked, for the whole journey about their views on the meaning of life and current affairs.
In the back row a little boy sat, with his mum. She was talking to him about aeroplanes as he didn’t understand why the wings didn’t flap.
By the emergency exit a man sat, his hair unbrushed, his teeth yellowing, in crumpled clothes. He checked his Blackberry compulsively. He felt in his pocket and opened up his wallet in search of something, but was distracted. The corner of a photograph stuck out the side of a pocket. He pulled it out and looked at it. It was of him looking much happier and better kept, and a beautiful auburn haired woman. He ripped it promptly in two.
Four seats to my left, sat twin brothers around the age of 10. They sat, and intently discussed which colour power ranger was the best.
The man in the toilet passed the plastic cube around in his hands, a small pin stuck out the side of it, also plastic. Tears begun to stream down the man’s face, and he begun to shake. He whispered to himself softly, and the tears stopped. He pulled the pin sharply out of the plastic cube and the cube exploded. The plane burst into flames in mid air, the carriage shattered, and the wreckage fell into the sea.
There were no survivors.

if youv'e read this far you must be bored.
someone give me an opinion on this?
I think its a bit rubbish, and may rewrite, opinions would be good, as its for school.

I know its long - sorry.
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