Oh boy. Another travel-tastic tale.  For once, I am not responsible for this. It was those bastards at Air Canada.  I was flying to Ottawa. So, so excited to be on an all expenses paid, invited trip.  Anyway, since boarding, I’d had a tasty lunch; a lentil curry and rice jobby. I watched some tv, had a doze and a few hours later got woken up by the air steward putting a box on my tray. It was a funny box, like a happy meal box. No one around me had a box.  “Wow”, I thought, “I must have won a prize. This is a truly great day”.  (New readers should take a shufty at this earlier post. Seasoned readers will probably be wondering when I’m going to stop thinking this).

Anyway, in total excitement, I opened the colourful box to find that it contained a big apple. Oh. What the fuck is this? Just in time to save me wondering too much about what was going on, the trolleys chundered down the aisle to the front of the plane.  A delicious smell wafted up the plane. “Hot chicken or hot vegetarian baguette?” the crew started asking passengers. Ah, food time. Good I’m starving.

When the female steward reached my row, I asked for a vegetarian baguette. “You can’t have one”, she said, moving straight on to the woman sitting next to me.  “Why not?”, I asked, bemused.

“You’ve got a special meal”, she said. “A special meal?”, I spluttered. “Whaddaya mean special meal? It’s an apple!”  She remained totally calm and just repeated no, I couldn’t have a baguette.

“I don’t understand why I can’t have a veggie baguette?” I said reasonably.

“Because there aren’t enough and you ordered a special meal”, she replied.  “I didn’t order a special meal, I ordered a vegetarian meal”, I said through gritted teeth.  “There aren’t enough”, she repeated, firmly.

Now I ain’t no mathematician, but even I could see that this couldn’t be the case. “BUT YOU’RE ASKING PEOPLE IF THEY WANT ONE OR THE OTHER“, I said in complete frustration. “How can you NOT have more than you need?”  “Well, the last few people might not get a choice,” she responded still calm but with a look that said “Piss off and eat your apple, you loser”.

At this point I tried to bring nearby passengers into the discussion to support me in my argument that an apple wasn’t a meal. They all buried their faces into their baguettes and ignored me (sigh, as usual).

Almost defeated, I said slowly, “Well if you get to the end of the plane and by some chance you’ve got a veggie baguette left – because even if you’ve got just enough baguettes [like crap, I thought], someone might not want one – can I have it?”  “Yes”, she said, but the eyes again were saying something very different.  “Oh and another thing”, I huffed, “You can take this apple back too because that ain’t a meal”.  She took the apple and went off to dish out the remaining baguettes.

Ten minutes later the male steward came and told me there weren’t any baguettes left. I didn’t have the nerve to ask for the apple back.

I told the pigeons all about my happy meal later that night.