Amsterdamned On A Schiphol Runway

“Tonight was the night the sad and lonely Ryanair pilot would end it all. Spectacularly. Taking down all those on board Flight FR3101 from Amsterdam to Dublin with him”.

The flight my wife and I are on now — and the lines that pop into my head as we wait for air traffic clearance at Schiphol airport.

And I didn’t even know I was nervous …

Blimey! What a thought as I sit here, helpless, squeezed between two others in a little middle-row yellow and blue seat, waiting for takeoff. 

All of us sitting ducks. Our lives in the hands of the faceless man in charge of this tin bird, which will soon lift us thousands of flippin’ feet up into the air and — maybe — jet us sky high across thousands of miles of sea, fields, towns and cities to our Dublin destination. 

And tonight the night our pilot takes the plunge … nearly two-hundred souls powerless and petrified, strung in uncomprehending terror and confusion, and screaming blue jaysus as we abruptly begin the nosedive into oblivion. 

Nearly two-hundred hearts beating wildly in unison inside a giant metal corkscrew as it twists down through the rapidly diminishing seconds, before disintegrating on impact in a giant dark red spray of bone fragments, guts  and metal — adding some iron, at least, to the feast that awaits the starving seagulls beating towards us as fast as they can.

And no time — or point — to grab that life jacket and tug the chord, or blow into the little red tube, just like the cabin crew woman with the frozen smile shows you.

Our pilot had introduced himself to us over the intercom early on, all confident and rational sounding. Crackling in after the air hostess who was equally unintelligible in several languages.

And then we waited.

Forty minutes or more before the congestion on the local runway and the awful wind and rain waiting for us in Dublin would allow us to begin our return to the five degree temperature drop and all the rest of it.   

I did not care to contest the arm rest to my right with the skinny, ruddy-faced shaven dude reading a gruesome Stephen King. He had sat into his seat with body hinged away from me, making it clear he would not be engaging. Not that I had wanted to talk to him either. But still, feck him and his Stephen bloody King!

To my left, my wife is stuck into her misery lit special, Poor, by Katriona O’Sullivan, who escapes extreme poverty and the ravages of living with addict parents to not alone survive but soar academically and becomes a psychology professor, and writes her tale while she’s at it.

As the minutes grind on the Schiphol runway, I dabble with developing a life for our suicidal pilot … what had finally driven him over the edge: the physical and mental torments he suffered in childhood, marital problems, bad investments, the rash on his little toe that wouldn’t clear … what?   

All this as I stare straight ahead, silent and ostensibly serene. The space is so cramped, I can’t face fetching my own book from the rucksack I had stuffed in under the seat in front off me.

My phone was on airplane mode, so Googling had proved pretty pointless.

I wonder about Stephen King beside me, my expression innocent or at least inscrutable as I fabricate a ferocious profile for him: owns one of those horrible bully dogs, narky looking like himself. Proud Coolock Says No regular. Beeps at traffic lights even before the lights turn green. His female travelling companion feeding him Stephen King books to survive. Good job King is so prolific.

And all the while, the unintelligible hostess over the intercom, flagging pre-ordered food, drink … guns? … delivered to your seat after take off, seemingly, and there will be bingo and scratch cards, of course, and, for all I can make out, news of Ryanair’s plans to cut off passengers’ legs before boarding so they can squeeze their seats closer together and sit more bodies on board. Maybe you’ll pay extra for your legs. If they weigh over 10 kilos — sure I’ll bring just the one leg, so!

Vague memories of Amsterdam are in here too, my brain fluid the busy canals of the city we have just left, my shimmering thoughts the barges navigating my neural passages. 

The buildings lining those signature Amsterdam waterways, tall, skinny and elegant — like so many Dutch people — all along the cleverly planned intersecting canals, with their bobbling houseboats, and the madness of the cars parked right against the edge, way too close to the water below, for our comfort anyway.

At least we were safe on our Wednesday afternoon canal cruise, safe from the endless bicycles … big ones, fat ones, ones with huge carrier sections to the front, some bearing closed in small children or loved ones. Students, business heads, all sorts … even older ones, all visiting creatures from Planet Two Wheels, careering by you, left and right, and from around corners. A haughty bell ring warning, if you were lucky.

These lords and ladies of the red-orange bicycle pathways were to be feared and evaded at every street crossing — as well as the expected trams, buses and cars — leaving you clutching your wife’s sleeve, and she yours, especially in the first few hours, as you scuttled across to the next hazard.

The narrow corridor of north Amsterdam that became our world for the three days we spent there … the Olof Palmplein bus, GVB 35, to and from Noorderpark station, our magic travel cards thudding back the entrance gates, with that brilliant Star Trek doors opening noise, and down the stairs for the M52 metro underground (overground at this station), and just one stop to the vast Amsterdam Centraal station. 

Every tram or metro we took brought us back eventually to our safe Amsterdam Centraal haven. Never would forsake us, our centraal citadel, always waiting up for us, allowing us to venture further and further afield, safe in the knowledge that the opposite platform would bring us back to this hive of comfort and busy efficiency. The hive that patiently linked us to those places we wanted to visit, including Ajax’s surprisingly shoddy from the outside at least ArenA football stadium, and its giant photographs of Johan Cruyff, and the pose I copied ridiculously to make my son laugh on our WhatsApp.

Amsterdam city. Great second hand shops, good food and very decent coffee. Not too dear, but not cheap either. 

And, oh, the sickly stink of dope everywhere we went, coming at us around corners, not as quickly as those bicycles, mind … wafting up from beautifully tree-lined and foliaged alley ways, billowing invisibly out from open-doored coffee houses, fanning down the endless train and metro station corridors, following us up and down the vast stairways, slinking through the ticket gates after you onto your train, tram or metro carriage, to curl gently around the momentarily stilled passengers.

The sombrely exhilarating visit to the Vincent Van Gogh museum, dedicated to the sad and stunning life and brushwork of the incomparable Vincent — and the alluded to travails of his art dealer brother Theo, who had championed and protected his older brother, an unseen visionary blind to the normal ways, as best he could.

The gorgeous meet up with my Breda residing friend — our friend — Ciaran … the beers and the effortless animated chat, and the accidental but lovely Indonesian dinner in the restaurant we only stepped into to avoid a heavy shower …

Finally, Captain You-Don’t-Know-Who announces that we were ready to go. The slow rumble of jet propellers, the gentle glide and finally, the build up to that full on bombing it down the runway and tummy curdling take-off. Wheeee! Up we go! Hate it. Love it.

A sealed off world into itself this closed off cylinder that soars up into the skies, settling in above wind and rain and everything as we gaze down onto dreamy clouds and the red tinged horizon far across from the little windows.

And try not to worry if the captain is feeling a little suicidal …

Maybe, hold on a second here … I’m the one that has turned this perky pilot chappie into a suicidal maniac … and maybe I’m the one who can save the day. Not like Mr King, who would cheerfully mutilate us all. What will I do? Have the unintelligible hostess grasp the controls from his hand? I know, we’ll get his beloved little granny over the intercom to coax him down, with the promise of a cure for that annoying toe rash.

That sound now as we cruise across the darkening sky, like a powerful hairdryer left on, with a low rumbling beneath it, thrumming through my pressured ears, giving the whole adventure its otherworldly feel. 

Dastardly Stephen King presently sips on the Jameson and ice he pre-ordered, as he reads greedily on. My attitude is softening, as I consider the fact he has had the patience to stick with his book — and indeed well before we veer away towards Dublin, he clunks it closed theatrically and beams ‘finished’ to his companion.

By the time we are half-way through the flight, which in reality is smooth and actually quite short, I have passed into what I can only describe as a mild, and not unpleasant delirium, all the while still capable of sporadic intelligible conversation with my tired but satisfactorily holidayed wife.

Or maybe it is more of a trance — maybe even the delayed after affects of so much passively-inhaled Amsterdam weed, as I gaze out over the rows and rows of yellow-topped seats, that narrow into a small infinity. 

These Ryanair-yellow seat tops have, before my eyes, long begun to alternatively blend and separate, like yellow-frothed waves on the blue of the lower parts of the seats, as the plane roars and rumbles through the by now pitch-black sky. Making me aware again of the pitch-black waves thousands of feet below. And my vision of our unhappy pilot decanting us all into said waves. Maybe he actually hates his little granny, and her cures …

Oh, Jesus! What if he is a frustrated painter, this pilot, stuck in a career that no longer fulfils him, and instead off cutting off an ear in a fit of psychotic rage and anguish, he thinks he will take it all out on a bunch of passengers flying from Amsterdam to Dublin, one starry night?

Meanwhile, bobbling above the yellow-capped waves, rows and rows of heads similarly stretch out, growing smaller and smaller, the lines on either side of the passageway converging on the cabin crew eyrie at the front of the plane. Some of younger heads are baseball-hatted, the odd one braided, but mostly they are bare, the crowns of the men sprouting everything from envy-inducing manes, to pinking scalps, and all the way to full on bald. One older man has even embraced the sheen of his denuded pate by decorating it with a tattoo of what looks like a little tower.

Eventually, our skipper, who mercifully has called off his intended mass murder, announces that we are nearing our destination, and for a while, the main lights go off, and the rumble and roar dies to a low mumble, and the voices around me sound far away and vague. Like my own thoughts. I’m waiting for my ears to pop and normal sound to resume, like someone finally found the remote control.

I stare a while up at the only illuminations, the tiny no-smoking signs to the left and the equally tiny belt buckles arrowing towards the metal fasteners they will never reach. Out of reach … always out of reach.

The cabin lights came on, and soon were are sweeping down, down and thump! We land, safe and unmurdered, in good old dreary Dublin, which rises up all windy and rain-swept to greet us. Never one to coddle or cosset us, our Dublin. But always herself. No Amsterdam Centraal, but hub to home, family and all the rest nonetheless.

It’s good to be alive.