Carol’s Column

The only time I've been speechless is on a plane

I love flying because I always meet the most interesting people. Take last week when I flew from Johannesburg to Cape Town. There I was, sitting in my seat listening intently to the steward describing what to do in an emergency.

Like most people who fly fairly frequently, I've heard the recital before, but I always feel sorry for the demonstrators when they have to perform in a vacuum.

When you're scrunched in a narrow seat in an intimate situation - and what could be more intimate than an aeroplane with its captive passengers who cannot escape, other than to the toilet - you often chat to the person beside you.

On this occasion, God had smiled on me. More often than not, I find myself wedged between one person resembling a Sumo wrestler and another who makes Kobus Wiese look like Twiggy in her heyday. This time, I was seated next to a slim, trim man with twinkling eyeballs.

One glass of wine led to another (wine is an excellent flight stress reliever) - and conversation flowed.

It turned out he was a reinsurer who insured insurers. To tell the truth, I'd never heard of a reinsurer before.

I always thought one paid insurance premiums (and boy, does one pay insurance premiums), and then got paid out (if you were lucky) by the insurance company. It turns out that insurance companies are twitchy and so, to alleviate their twitchiness, they reinsure themselves.

For instance, model Naomi Campbell, who recently visited these shores to kiss President Mandela, among others, is insured for millions. And, in turn, the company that insured her is insured just in case. It seems every large company is insured and then reinsured.

Besides Naomi Campbell, Pavarotti and Lloyds, he reinsured the airline in which we flew.

Yes, flying is educative. Once I sat next to a man called Leon Hong whose profession was to transport unusual delicacies to his brother, a doctor in Canton. In his specially lined briefcase he was carrying a frozen whale penis which he said was particularly efficacious for the treatment of impotency. For the only time in a lengthy life, I was speechless.

Then there are the myths. Mercedes Tronkelheim of Florida, USA, said she always took constipation tablets before a flight because she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she was to inadvertently kill some innocent person on the ground when she evacuated her bowels.

Naturally I explained that nothing dropped from the plane into the sky. That in fact, sewage systems of aircraft functioned chemically and that all effluent arrived along with its creators at their final destination. “That's not possible,” she retorted. “It would make the plane much too heavy.”

Then there was plump Corbett Greenspan of Ogies who insisted that I eat everything on the food tray. “You're much too thin,” he informed me. “And when flying, if you're too thin, you will be unable to use the lavatory.”

He obviously saw my look of disbelief.

“You see,” he explained, “if you're too thin, you can get sucked down the toilet and then, where would you be?”

The most extraordinary person I ever sat beside was a Bulgarian professor of zoology who spent the entire flight from Johannesburg to Miami telling me about his research in mating goats with sheep.

“The ramifications are enormous,” I remember he said. “Who knows, perhaps one day we'll be able to mate humans with more hardy animals such as pigs. Just imagine.”

Well, if flying is not always educative, it's certainly entertaining.

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