Body and class

I asked the 1st class hostess who checked our seat assignments as we boarded if she by chance had any newspapers for a journalist in cattle class. "We’re not full up here; I can give you some. What would you like? But please be discreet."

However there were no BA magazines in any class, no Business Life to bring back home to study. No blankets. No choice of meal. One film instead of two. And so on.

We were body-searched before boarding. That reminded me of the precautions taken on the Egypt Air flight we had taken with J Walter Thompson in 1986. Nevertheless I saw that numbers of people had more than the permitted number of items of carry-on luggage. Why wasn’t anyone paying attention to that?

No blankets because most blankets, we were told, had been given to stranded travelers at Heathrow. Ater all, the entire US air system had ben shut down for two days (the first time in history). The US stock market had closed for four days, also the first time ever.