First Time on an Aeroplane

Qasim Bari, from I form, recently wrote this vivid piece on 'My First Time in an Aeroplane':-

It was the first time I had ever set foot on an aeroplane. The air-hostess greeted me as she greeted everyone who boarded the plane, with the same blank smile on her face. We all passed by her and walked down the corridor, reading and searching through the numbers and letters written on the ceiling for the one that was meant for us. I felt as if I were playing a game of “Battleships” searching for an enemy ship.

Once I had sat down in my tightly confined yet still comfortable seat, I watched as passenger after passenger boarded the plane, businessmen with shiny suitcases and families looking to get away for the holidays, and then I thought to myself, “How on earth would this great chunk of metal carry all these people high into the sky, miles from the ground?”

The door shut with a cushioned “thud!” Then as if on cue, the engines of the great metal beast began to purr louder and louder like my cat Garfield, until it was roaring like a majestic lion making the whole plane shudder in fear.

The aircraft made its way down the runway accelerating as it went. It was a whole new exhilarating, yet slightly scary sensation for me. I could feel the ground slowly slipping away until miraculously there was absolute nothingness between the runway and the base of the plane in which I sat.

I peered out my window, now midway through my journey (neck hurting from craning my head in this position) in total awe at the sight. The blue, blue sea below was as blue as the paint I had used to whitewash across my canvas in art class last Tuesday. It was as rippled as the tasty meringue tart I had had that morning.

I had always wondered how it was possible that the world was round when it always looked so flat from wherever I stood on the surface yet as I looked out my window I gasped, now totally converted into Christopher Columbus’s way of thinking. There outside my tiny little porthole was the gleaming curved horizon.

I don’t have a photographic memory but I shall always remember when I looked out that window, my first ever time on an aeroplane.