A few days ago, I spent several hours at 30,000 feet, crammed into a large tube with 200 or so other unfortunates who desperately needed to escape the wrath of winter and head south for a brief respite from -25C temperatures. And as usual in these days of airline cost-cutting, the flight was full, the seats were tiny, and you were lucky if elbows were all you rubbed with the strangers with whom you shared that very small space.
So I had to shudder when I came across this story about a German travel agent who is now booking nude flights for customers going on naturist vacations.
Fortunately for the general population (but not for the crew), nudity is restricted to the flight itself, so passengers will have to undress and dress on board and not in the airport. One wonders, will there be a "Dress/Undress Now” lamp to go along with the “Fasten Seatbelts” sign?
And what about the post-landing crush when everyone leaps from their seats to stand in the aisles 30 seconds after the wheels touch down? It’s bad enough on a clothed flight when everyone is grabbing their bags to deplane, but that will be nothing compared with what it will be like when a bunch of naked folks are grabbing bags (oops, sorry mate) and trying to get dressed at the same time.
Now I have no issues with naturism, or as it used to be more quaintly known, nudity. If folks want to bare all in the privacy of their homes, their back yards, or on the beach that’s fine by me; l may even join in if it’s appropriate and I feel like it. But I just can’t get my head around being in the middle seat of a row of naked people, excited (but hopefully not too excited) about going off on a naturist vacation to some hot spot.
And why, oh why, since reading this story have I been unable to purge my mind of the Monte Python sketch that goes, in part, “... draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues...”?
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