Flying. It's boring. Boring boring boring.

Flying is boring. There, I’ve said it and you can’t make me unsay it. Flying is boring.

It is, of course, ridiculous. Here’s the case for the defence:

• You’re six or seven miles up in the air, travelling at speeds that it’s hard to imagine – approaching 1000 kilometres an hour (hey, isn’t that 1 megametre? now there’s a word you don’t find in everyday use) or 600mph in old money;
• You have free access to about 50 or 60 films, 100 TV programmes, countless CDs, playlists and spoken books;
• You of course brought your iPod, 2 magazines and a ‘worthy’ book that you know you must get round to reading, and isn’t a long flight just the time;
• They handed you a free paper when you got on, they feed you and supply you with limitless alcohol, and yet, and yet, and yet…

Here’s the case for the prosecution:

• You’re bored. B.O.R.E.D.

I rest my case.

There’s something about the constant low-grade hum, the atmosphere and the size of the seats that just contrive to suck all the life-force out of every human being trapped in that flying torpedo.

[While we’re on the subject of low-grade hum, that in itself should be pretty amazing. You’re maybe as little as ten metres from an engine powerful enough to casually toss 160,000kg (hey, hey, hey… 160 MEGAGRAMMES!) of metal into the air and keep it up in the stratosphere, and all you can hear is ‘a low grade hum’. Wow. Big deal, Mr Think-You’re-So-Clever Jet Engine. Frank Whittle’s great invention reduced to a low grade hum. Ha.]

My 12 hour flight to Singapore had at least two wonderful distractions to add some interest. Firstly a 2½ hour wait on the tarmac while they tried to work out whether it was safe to fly (which was at least encouraging), and then 3 babies who took it in turns to entertain the passengers with assorted cries, moans and expressions of pain and anguish that would have put a Greek chorus to shame.

Between the three of them they covered most of those 12 hours. Thanks guys, at least that provided me with some sort of visceral reality to hang on to during those otherwise emotionally sterile 12 hours. 12 hours. 12 boring hours. I’ll never get them back, you know.

In case you’re interested, I never even started that worthy book. There’s always the flight back.