Just Tricking! (12 page)

‘What did he say?' says the lady. ‘What did he say?'

‘He said it's going to be pretty rough,' I tell her. ‘Hurricanes and tornadoes are expected. He said to hold tight and just hope and pray that you're not sitting next to someone who's prone to air-sickness. He said that it's okay if you want to change seats when the plane stops climbing in a few minutes.'

‘Well, I'm not going to change seats,' says the lady. ‘I thank God that I'm sitting next to a big, strong young man like you. I'd be too scared to sit by myself in conditions like this.'

The plane finishes its long slow taxi out to the runway. It turns and then starts rushing forward. I can feel my body being drawn back hard against the seat as the wheels leave the tarmac and we climb steeply into the sky.

The pilot is right, of course. It's one of the smoothest take-offs ever. But I jiggle and shake and rattle the seats to make it seem really wild and rough.

‘Ooohhh,' I groan. ‘Oooooohhhhh. I feel sick already. Are you sure you don't want to change seats?'

‘No, love,' she says, taking my hand in hers. ‘I'll look after you.'

Oh no! What did I do to deserve this? Now she wants to be my mum!

This calls for serious evasive action.

Forget the emergency life-jackets and the emergency oxygen masks. They are absolutely no use to me.

This situation calls for the emergency corn relish.

Actually, I don't call corn relish ‘corn relish'. I call it ‘spew relish'. Because, as far as I'm concerned, the only difference between corn relish and spew is that corn relish comes in a jar.

It looks like spew.

It smells like spew.

It even tastes like spew.

The only thing more like spew than corn relish is custard, and I don't even want to think about that because it will
really
make me spew.

Anyway, I always carry a jar of spew relish with me for emergencies just like this.

I slide my hand out of the old lady's.

‘It's okay now, thank you,' I say. ‘I'm feeling much better all of a sudden.'

‘Well, you just let me know if there's anything I can do for you,' she says.

The air hostess unbuckles herself from her seat and starts her mad rush to offer us all drinks and food. The flight usually only lasts about an hour. As soon as she's finished giving out teas, coffees, fruit juices, cans of drink and biscuits in cellophane, it'll be time to collect all the left-overs, pack everything up and strap herself back into her seat, ready for touch-down.

She approaches our seat.

The old lady orders a cup of tea and biscuits. I want to order one of everything, but I can't. For the old spew relish trick to work, I've got to convince her that I'm too sick to eat.

‘Nothing for me,' I say to the air hostess. ‘Maybe just a little water.'

The hostess returns with the tea. While the old lady's busy adding her sugar and milk, I reach down to my bag and dig out my jar of spew relish.

By the time I'm through, this old lady is not going to want to sit next to me.

She's not going to even want to sit on the same plane as me.

In fact, I'll make sure she never even wants to
go
on a plane again.

I'm bent over, facing the wall of the plane so the old lady can't see what I'm doing. I screw the lid off the jar. I pinch my nose and tip the jar of spew relish up to my mouth. I try to suck in as much as I can without swallowing. I manage to get about half the jar in. Lucky I've got such a big mouth.

I put the lid on the jar and tuck it back into my bag.

I sit back in my seat, hold my belly and moan quietly.

‘Are you all right?' says the old lady.

I can't answer, of course, because my mouth's full.

I just groan, louder this time.

‘Do you need a sick bag?' she says.

I nod.

She grabs a bag from in front of her – the one with my rubber dog pooh in it – and passes it to me.

I rock back and forth and puff out my cheeks and then pretend to splurk up into the bag. Not that it all goes into the bag, of course.

I take care to dribble some down my chin and onto my T-shirt.

‘Oh, you poor thing,' says the old lady. ‘You poor old thing.'

Huh?
She's
calling
me
old?

‘I'm okay now, thanks,' I say. ‘That feels much better.'

‘You know, it's funny,' she says, ‘but I'm not feeling sick at all. This is one of the smoothest flights I've ever had. You must have a very delicate stomach.'

‘Extremely delicate,' I say. ‘But I'm really hungry now.'

‘Oh, what a pity,' she says. ‘You're too late to order any morning tea.'

‘That's okay,' I say. ‘I brought my own. Could I borrow your teaspoon?'

‘Why certainly,' she says. ‘Here you are.'

I take the teaspoon. This is it. Any minute now she'll be out of her seat like a rocket.

‘Well, down the hatch.'

I open the neck of the sick bag and dip the spoon in. I scoop up a spoonful of spew relish and pull it out of the bag. I pass the spoon under my nose a couple of times and sniff deeply.