"A bottle of your finest champagne!" I bellowed at the serving girl.
"Certainly, sir. Would you like anything to eat with that?"
"Absolutely! I want the most expensive meal you have. I don't care what it is. Just bring me the most overpriced item on your menu."
"Oh, I'm sorry, sir," she said. "Easyjet only have these grilled chicken baguettes."
"Then that is what I want. Bring a chicken baguette hence that I may feast like a king!"
The orange-garbed wench seemed a bit taken aback for a moment. She soon recovered and did a little curtsey and said, "Right away, my liege! That will be £10.50 all together."
I felt a little self indulgence was in order as I had just caught the flight by the skin of my teeth and was feeling somewhat overwrought.
When I'd arrived at Ciampino airport two days ago I had taken a taxi into Rome and have been cheated by an eccentric madman. He charged 85 Euros for a trip which a trip which I discovered later should have cost 40 Euros at the most.
His name was Tony the Taxi Driver and he drove in that irritating style some people have of alternately stomping his foot full on the accelerator and lifting if off completely. He repeated the process the entire time he was driving. Every couple of seconds he stomped his foot on the pedal and the battered white station wagon gave a little lurch.
Another little foible of Tony's was that he only seemed comfortable if one of his signal lights was on and the cab was drifting between at least two lanes on the motorway.
Now this may sound like old-fogey driving technique, and make no mistake - Tony was old. He wore thick coke-bottle glasses and had thinning white hair, most of it coming from out of his ears and nose. But he did not drive slowly. The speedometer lurched regularly between 130 and 135 km per hour depending on the elevation of his foot. Or at least it did until it quit from overwork and lay exhausted on "0" as we flew past Porsches and Ferraris.
And, just in case we were bored, Tony shouted at us the entire time he drove - an improbable tale about how he had once been hired to drive a Jaguar from Rome to London by a rich man who had broken his leg skiing.
I hate Tony the Taxi Driver.
After that experience, I decided there was no way I was taking a taxi back to the airport. Instead I decided to take the shuttle bus from the main train station. This was logistically a little more complicated. My flight was due to leave at 8:55pm. I'd planned to catch the 6:30 bus, but missed it by five minutes. I wasn't too worried, though. The next bus left at 7 and was due to arrive at Ciampino at 7:40.
At first things looked fine. The bus arrived and by 6:50 it was three quarters full. And then, inexplicably, we just sat there. And sat there... And sat there...
We finally left at 7:20 and immediately became stuck in the mire that is Roman traffic. Even running 20 minutes late we should have, in theory, got to the airport by 8pm. Instead we arrived at 8:25.
Coincidentally, this was the time checkin for my flight was due to close.
Sure enough, I got to the desk at 8:27 and the lone attendant at the desk refused to issue me a boarding pass. An anxious queue of others from my bus who were trying to make the same flight grew behind me as I used all my seductive guile and subtle menace to get her to change her mind.
In the end I resorted to mind control. I wiggled my fingers at her and raised my left eyebrow and gazed at her with my psychic mind control gaze and whispered, "the gate... the gate... phone the gate..."
"Just one second," she said. "I'll call the gate."
After a flurry of telephonic Italian, she put the phone down and said, "yes, you can check in now, but you'll have to run. They've almost finished boarding."
Foolishly, I believed this. I ran through the airport, mind-controlled and bludgeoned my way through the security queue, then ran again.
And found myself at the end of the longest queue in the world.
They had announced boarding but hadn't actually let anyone on the plane yet.
Right, well admittedly I didn't have much of a punchline there, but you can see how a fellow might feel both stressed and relieved in such a situation and be prone to making self-indulgent demands.
The champagne was bubbly and wet -- if a little warm. Fortunately, they gave me a full cup of ice which helped cool it down and made it even wetter. The chicken baguette was fresh enough and not too dry. I would rate it higher than the last chicken baguette I'd ordered from Upper Crust.
The big challenge will be how they fare against other budget airlines. Next time I fly Ryanair I'll have to order their finest meal as well. It will be a culinary battle of the air.
& yor point is?