where art collides philosoperontap

The boat. The first class lounge. The whispered conversation. Much rustling of biscuit packets, complimentary. We haven’t left the quayside yet. The lounge is almost full. That isn’t meant to happen. First class is supposed to be prohibitively expensive. The domain of the international jet set elite. Though one does have to ask oneself why someone who probably has their own private jet would want to cross to the Isle of Man on the boat. There is a good airport on the island and they welcome private jets. It’s a good source of income. The landing fees. I don’t know how much the landing fees are. I have never asked. If you can afford your own jet you don’t bother with such trivia.

I’ve never flown in a private jet meself though I did once go up in the jump seat of an RAF Jetstream. It was being flown by my next door neighbour at the time. He was leaving to go back to his unit at RAF Brize Norton having spent a couple of years leading the multi-engine training unit at RAF Cranwell. It wasn’t normal to take a civilian up but he got permission off the base commander (or whatever the top guy’s title was) on the strength of my being a VIP member of the Executive of the Parliamentary Space Committee. Not sure I’ve ever mentioned that to you before.

It was a terrific committee to be part of. It is very important for Members of Parliament to maintain their knowledge of specialist subjects such as the space race and the Parliamentary Space Committee was there to ensure that this knowledge was kept totally up to date. It did this by arranging educational visits to events such as the Farnborough Air Show. On one occasion, together with the French parliamentary equivalent we were guests of the Duke of Kent in his pavilion looking out at the air display. It was position A. Where the Harrier jump jets used to perform a bow. The lunch was most enjoyable and we spent the afternoon sat outside on the terrace drinking champagne. When the time came to go a fleet of Jaguar cars swept us to the luxury coach that would take us back to Westminster. All except me because having squeezed the last MP into the last car there was no more room.

No problemo said a flunky. The royal flag was promptly whipped off the front of the Duke of Kent’s Bentley and I was chauffeured back to the coach in regal style. It was knocking on a bit, the old Bentley but I didn’t mind at all J

I also did the Paris Air Show in the equivalent style but the best trip of all was the European Grand Tour we did one summer. We gathered at Heathrow Airport early one morning and flew to Toulouse to meet the Board of Directors of Matra Espace, the French satellite manufacturer. The high bay tour was very interesting and it was followed by an extremely enjoyable lunch (fillet steak) in the Executive restaurant.

In the afternoon we met the Board of Directors of CNES, the French National Space Agency who treated us to a tour of their mission control centre. All very interesting though it was hard to stay awake after the lunch. That evening we were joined for dinner (lobster) by both boards of directors in yet another champagne blow out. All good stuff.

The next day was equally hard going. We flew to Paris to meet with the Board of Eutelsat. The board room was like something out of a movie set with lots of comfortable leather chairs and, being on or near to the top floor of Tour Montparnasse. Tour Montparnasse is famous for being a building totally out of place in Paris. It is nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower and stands out like a sore thumb being the only building of its type in the area. This is because the French realised that it was a mistake to spoil the view with such skyscrapers and after it was finished promptly banned any others from being built.

For us it was a treat to sit there looking across at the top of the Eiffel Tower. This we did both in the meeting and afterwards at lunch in a private dining room at the top of the building. Yes there was the usual champagne etc.

Later in a departure from our habit of flying everywhere we caught the Eurostar train to Brussels. I remember that the air conditioning had broken down in our carriage and the only means of keeping cool was to buy up the entire stock of lager from the drinks trolley, which I did.

The evening in Brussels was a belter, both from it being a great night out and the temperature. Being a practical lad I wore shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and sandals. The MPs, who wanted to avoid giving anyone the notion that they were having a good time all wore suits and ties and sweated buckets. We had moules frites and Belgian beer and a good time was had by all.

The next morning it all started again with a meeting with the European Commission DG13 followed by lunch (champagne/steak/lobster/totally lost track by now) before flying back to Heathrow to attend a reception with Astronaut Buzz Aldrin to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the moon landings.

This may all sound like the high life but it is very difficult for MPs to avoid the entertainment in the course of these essential educational trips. We should regard their lifestyle with compassion. I recall meeting the chairman of the committee Sir Michael Marshall around a year or so after he had retired. He was a shadow of his former self. The parliamentary lifestyle involved so much eating and drinking that it piled the weight on. Returning to the normal life of the retiree, gardening and sitting in wind shelters on the promenade at Eastbourne brought his girth and collar size down to a more acceptable level.

It’s quite a handy by product of losing weight. Finding that you fit into clothes long since consigned to the back of the wardrobe. That’s assuming you haven’t chucked them. One holds on to these things in the eternally optimistic hope that yes, one day the waistline will start to shrink.

The same thing is true of gym membership. I was a gold member of LA Fitness. Gold got me in to every LA Fit club in the country except for three posh ones in London, as I recall. It didn’t matter, I never used one of them except the one down the road from the office in Newark and that got to be only about once every three months. I held on to that membership for years in the belief that once I stopped that would be totally it. The abandonment of any hope of ever getting fit again. Common sense and the need to save sixty quid a month or whatever it was (the filthy rich never ask) eventually prevailed and my commercial relationship with the club was terminated.

Sounds terminal doesn’t it. It is meant to. If you listen carefully you can year the accompanying loud banging of fist on table for effect. Turn up the volume. Smell the coffee. Buy the tshirt. My friend went to the Isle of Man and all I got was a lousy tshirt. Ungrateful wretch. Some people would give their eye teeth for a tshirt from the Isle of Man. Mind you if that is the case they are probably already walking around with no eye teeth left because they will previously already have traded them for tshirts. There’s no telling some people what’s good for them. You can lead a horse to water…

A question springs to mind. If you lead the horse to water one assumes that you aren’t actually riding the horse but walking next to it, holding on to the halter. The question that sprang to mind is “when at the water do you need to be dismounted when the horse starts to drink”. You have to assume that the horse will actually have a drink. The point is whether the physical act of the horse bending down to lap up the water will result in you sliding off the back of the horse. For the purpose of this mental exercise one has to assume that you are unable to prevent the falling off by digging your heels into the stirrups or holding on to the pommel of the saddle.

By using the word pommel we are revealing that the horse actually belongs to a cowboy. Picture the scene. It’s been a hot and dusty day on the trail. A couple of cowpokes come into view. The river is a blessed relief against the backdrop of sandstone outcrops and lone cacti. The men dismount and rinse their tired faces in the cool waters. The horses bend down next to the men and take their fill.

Sitting on a rock above the river bank the men decide this is a good spot to camp for the night. The scene fades to a couple of hours later. The boys are sat around a fire drinking black cawfee and shooting the breeze. In the distance a coyote howls. It can be seen silhouetted against the moon.

There is a rustling in the bushes but it is only a deer coming to the water for a drink. Soon the men tire and turn in for the night. Tomorrow is another day on the trail. We never find out where they are headed because, dear reader, we have clicked on a link and move on from the wild west using the power of the wild wild web.

The boat is beginning to rock. The sea isn’t obviously swellier, if I can invent a suitable word, but the boat is rocking.

3rd Law Part 54 here

3rd Law Part 56 here