Consuming Interest
Junkets by Jet
By LESLIE
ADRIAN
THE joys of flying by jet are mixed, I'm beginning to discover. It's fine to be told by the pilot that you are travelling at 557 miles an hour and will do the journey from, say, New York to London in six hours, but the airlines have to pack a lot of people into every jet air- craft if they are to operate at an economical that a large proportion of the seats are arranged so that there are six in a row with a narrow corridor down the middle and you feel rather boxed in, especially if you are the middle one of the three on either side of the corridor. Moreover, there is very little leg-room in front of you and you can't push your seat back to a really relaxed angle without feeling that you are pushing it into the face of the per- son behind you.
If you can afford to travel first class you will find only two seats on either side of the corridor, the seats themselves are wider and there is rather more leg-room. If you can't travel first you may as well make the most of it and I have two tips to offer. First, travel out of season, i.e. before May and after September. In winter you may find that not all the seats are booked and you may be able to spread yourself across two or even three seats. I lay flat on my back all the way across the Atlantic recently and can recommend this method strongly. Recommended reading: Kon-Tiki or that other wonderful description of roughing it, Through the Alimentary Canal with Gun and Camera.
Secondly, try to reserve a seat in row number 13. I hope you're not superstitious because row 13 in the two Boeing 707s in which I flew to and from New York is where two of the emergency exits are. This makes it necessary for there to be much more leg-room in row 13 than in the others so that there may be easy access to the window exits at either side. If you're in row 13 you are travelling in almost first-class comfort for a tourist-class fare. What's more, if you are a man who doesn't believe in all that nonsense about women and children first you're all set to get ahead of the field in case of trouble.
More language courses on records, this series put• out by Odhams: short (two-record) intro- ductions to French, Italian, German and Spanish, at 30s. the set. I am still not wholly convinced of the usefulness of records for learning (as• distinct from brushing up) a language, and in these' there is a tendency. to be too high-flown for the type of audience at which, presumably, they are aimed. Neapolitan hotel clerks hearing an English tourist ask 'Puo mostrarmi come si tclefona?' for 'Can you show me how to make a call?' would think their legs were being pulled —such elegance is beyond most expatriates after level. This means a lifetime in Italy, let alone the casual tourist.
What are useful are the tips in the prefatory notes to the various lessons on asking the way, travelling, and so on. In the admirable accom- panying handbooks, they have useful advice on what to expect in the different countries, where to find stamps, and when to tip. The records themselves, though as down-to-earth in their subject matter, are more elevated linguistically : recommended for revision, not for beginners.
I am pleased see that the price of nylon sheets is beginning to creep down. Fogarty's are getting out some at £4 19s. 6d. a single pair, £6 9s. 6d. a double—not what you might call cheap, but they are fitted and they don't need ironing. They come in a variety of pastel—or acid-drop- shades. How many housewives will think it worth adding one more burden to the drip-dry list I wouldn't care to predict: but there it is: and a price reduction of 30s. a pair—however much (it may suggest) they were over-priced before, is still worth recording.
I do not know whether I am allowed to con- sider myself as a consumer of words. In an argu- ment the other day on whether the word `oxymoron' was or was not a word readily understood by all, I noted that those who remembered what it meant all produced the same textbook example: Tennyson's 'His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.' But one man, a newcomer to the word, said, `Ah, I see. Crispy noodles in a sweet-sour sauce.'
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