Taki Taki

High life | 19 September 2012

issue 22 September 2012

Nueva York

The dateline is in Spanish because I have yet to hear any English spoken here in the Bagel, and I landed in some style more than 24 hours ago. Never mind. Flying at 47,000 feet at close to 500 knots per hour on a G550 is as close as it gets to perfection in travelling. The G550 is the Mozart-Beethoven-Schubert-Schumann-Edward Hopper-Degas-William Holden-Burt Lancaster-John Wayne-Papa Hemingway-F. Scott Fitzgerald-Lew Hoad-Roy Emerson-Robert E. Lee-Hasso von Manteuffel of airplanes.

There, you get my point, dontcha? Way up there, close to the angels, there ain’t no turbulence. The plane glides like a giant bird, and silently to boot. And it still has tricks up its sleeve. The cabin is pressurised at 3,000 feet, a bit like lunching up at the Eagle club, whereas the peasants are pressured at 9,000, where throats get dry quicker than a Bill Clinton lie, pregnant women are known to give premature birth, and drink gets the better of men and women of the lower persuasion.

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