After eating a hearty in-flight lunch, washed down with a couple of alcoholic drinks, trans-Atlantic flights are bound to make you tired and sleepy so, you fall asleep. Airplane seats are designed to maximise the number of passengers that can be squeezed into the airplane, rather than your comfort so, your sleeping position is awkward, to say the least.
Combine the above facts and you get to fall asleep at an angle, with a likelihood of your head resting sideways on the shoulder of your fellow passenger.
If the stars in the sky line up nicely, your fellow passenger is a very attractive and engaging woman, with whom you have struck up an amusing conversation, and she happens to own a very inviting shoulder to rest on. If however, one of those stars suddenly goes out of alignment, you start drooling in your sleep straight on to her lovely shoulder, adorned with a white silk blouse.
Years and years had passed by since then and I still cannot find a reasonable set of words I could have uttered to get her to think of me anything other than ‘a disgusting person who should be avoided at all costs’. All I could do at the time was to rush to the toilet, freshen up and return to my seat, pretending nothing had happened.
Wherever you are that young woman with a damaged silk blouse, I am so, so sorry, I should have known better.
