Save all your kisses for me
From the moment they held hands and locked tongues, they annoyed me.
They couldn't keep their hands and lips away from each other. As she reached for his backside, I reached for my sickbag.
Well, I would have if the kid from The Exorcist sitting on my immediate left hadn't decided to reintroduce the cabin to the contents of his in-flight meal.
His vomiting was so bad I thought the plane's sewage system had been rerouted towards his rectum.
But I'd have happily suffered beside his Swahili yodelling for 12 hours than endure the courting couple groping and molesting each other on my right.
My flight back to Singapore from Brazil's World Cup was not pleasant. There were battery farm hens turning down the chance to sit beside me because conditions were so bad.
I was torn between 'Vomity Vomitson' and two young lovers eating each other.
Only they weren't young. There's no ageism in this column - fondle and fiddle with each other until your heart's content - just don't do it sitting beside me on a plane while I'm trying to eat my noodles.
The French woman - I'll call her Cougar - was in her mid-40s. The Frenchman - I'll call him Toy Boy - was in his late 20s.
I know this because I watched them fill in their Singapore immigration cards and was amazed that he could fill his card unaided, with joined-up writing and everything.
To say Cougar was a bit obvious and clingy was an understatement. Perhaps fearing that her boyfriend might dash off with the nearest hostess at any moment, she spent most of the flight with her hand stuck down the back of his jeans. The trouble was he was facing towards her, leaving his backside jutting in my general direction on his outside left. As she fiddled with his tight buns, she practically changed the song selections on my iPhone.
And it was an iPhone in my pocket. I really wasn't pleased to see her.
I'm a 1.94m-tall guy who struggles for space in an airline seat at the best of the times. The last thing I needed was a boyfriend-molesting Cougar so close she could count the change in my pocket.
And then there was the kissing.
Now there has always been something peculiar about the act of kissing. When a caring, physical connection is made between two kindred spirits who have fallen for each other, such a primal display of affection can be beautiful - as long as you are one of them.
If you happen to be a nearby bystander, it's like watching a pair of seals fight over a dead fish.
There is nothing remotely erotic about being stuck beside two people whose slurping suggests they are trying to suck a golf ball through a straw to win some sort of prize.
The pair only stopped kissing to come up for air. At one point, he had his head in her mouth.
It was like those dodgy crocodile shows in Thailand, where some poor teenager poses for photos between the beast's teeth while tourists shower him with dollar bills.
I considered throwing Toy Boy a $2 note and pulling his head clear before Cougar suffered lockjaw.
Apart from anything else, I had been away from my wife for six weeks and this inexhaustible 12-hour foreplay routine appeared to be teasing me.
By the time we crossed over Northern Europe and into Asia, I considered giving Toy Boy's backside a playful slap. (Relax, I made that up. And please, let's not pulp any more fiction.)
Finally, delightfully, those screeching tyres bit into the Changi tarmac. I felt like I'd been watching a really lame porn movie for 12 hours and stank of vomit. But I was home.
My wife and daughter were waiting excitedly at Changi's arrival hall. My wife had tears in her eyes. I didn't realise the smell of a child's sick could be that pungent.
But she was shaking. Earlier that day, she had received a text that a plane had been shot down - at the same time I was in the air somewhere between Europe and Asia.
She quickly discovered that the poor souls had perished on flight MH17. It wasn't my plane, obviously, but the tension, fear and relief had combined to short-circuit her emotions.
Suddenly, nothing else mattered. I turned into that French couple on the plane.
I hugged the people I love most in this world, wishing I could hold on forever.
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