Space Invaders

After 26.5 hours in the air/airports, we arrived back in Australia. Pre-flight I was stressed about trying to balance when I should sleep to reduce jet lag with how many movies I could get in without being stuck in the middle of one when the crew switch off the system for landing. I really shouldn't have worried. When everyone else started happily watching their first movie, I realised to my horror that the screen on my in-flight entertainment system wasn't working. The look on my flight attendant's face when I told him of the problem informed me that I would just have entertain myself for the next 13 hours until they could get an engineer in to fix the problem.

With little else to do but sleep, I spent some time glancing around the cabin, feeling very fortunate that I had narrowly missed sitting next to the Ogre that Julian and I named 'Space Invader'. He was ticketed to sit next to me, but switched seats with another couple at the last minute. He enjoyed reading newspaper spreads, putting elbows on both armrests, and putting his feet up on the wall in front of him so that no-one else could get past. Most unfortunately, Space Invader did claim his rightful seat for the second leg of our journey. Every time I started to drift off to sleep, an elbow would hit my ribs, or a blanket would be flicked in my face when he moved. And given that he did not speak any English, and clearly didn't understand body language, I'm not sure why he tried to initiate conversation every time I pressed play on my ipod.

From time to time the Ogre's wife would come and visit him, calling out over Julian and me, to have conversations. It didn't matter that we had been asleep. She even stood on Julian's foot at one time while she was loudly conversing in french.

I'd like to say we got our own back on that flight, but life doesn't always work out that way.