What do you do?

He asked

It seemed quite an innocuous question

The sort of thing you say,

Whilst standing in an A380 lounge bar

Next to a stranger

At 39 thousand feet

All wobbly legs and belly

Feeling all at sea, in more ways than one

My digestive system struggling to cope with jet lag

Coupled with changes in pressure.

And it has become a pressured environment,

Travelling used to be easy

In the old days

Even a couple of years ago before

The fear of war and covid,

With the day-by-day changes

The drawbridge mentality of so many countries.

I’m alright Jack was an old black and white

Peter Sellars film

But the attitudes are universal

It is always the individuals who suffer

So many tired and anxious travellers

Fumbling through online declarations at the airport

Worried about missing a flight

Being refused entry

Feeling relieved just to get off the ground.

My mind was in a fog

Hampered as it was by alcohol

Sleep deprivation and a lack of good food

But what did I do?

‘I write.’

‘Oh I see…what do you write?’

The ‘what’ question always stumps me

I haven’t written a book for three years

All I do is post snippets and poems to online forums

What does that make me?

‘I kind of write things about life. The world and how we fit in it’

‘Are you an activist? The environment may be?’

I didn’t like where this was heading

I wasn’t sure how many climate change activists

Would be on a long-haul flight

Standing at the bar in business class

But was I an activist?

The last time I actually acted upon my convictions

Was to join the anti-nazi league in the eighties

Charging around Bethnal Green

Trying to prevent skinheads from beating up Bengali

Families who just wanted a chance to start again

In a new country

One that always tried to sell itself as inclusive,

So nothing has changed then?

‘I guess I raise issues from time to time.’

‘Oh…like what…Oh…like gender, reassignment and stuff.’

He raised his voice a little

My hopes that this might end well were sinking

Faster than crypto-currency

‘Yes I guess so…but not mine.’

He laughed

And I chose that moment to leave

Ever the bloody coward.