All Because An Air Stewardess Loves Being Betrayed

I’m often in oven gloves, but I never light my oven (remember the bird skeleton I found inside the cooker?). I wear oven gloves to prevent my feet marking the ceiling (my ceilings are white, my feet often aren’t).

I got the idea from Sally, an Air Stewardess. No sooner is she airborne than it’s time to serve drinks. Sally’s turns into a drinks dolly: she dispenses small cans of soft drinks, miniature bottles of spirits, and stacks of plastic glasses. On an aeroplane, it is vital that everything takes up as little room as possible. And everything must be lightweight. While the glasses are being cleared away, Sally checks that lunch is ready. The oven trays are so hot, she has to wear heatproof gloves. Sally could wear her oven gloves with her legs wide open: Sally’s single, like her oven gloves.

I train, to hold myself on a horizontal plane (but don’t confuse it with being level); I practice font-levers in my hall - a feat accomplished with oven gloves on my feet - poised in the air, streamlined like an airplane; my body’s so tray-like flat I could hold a in-flight meal, on rather than in, my stomach.

If I die in a plane crash, I want to come back – be reincarnated – as a tray for aeroplane food. I want to be-tray myself. Thanks to Sally I’m already be-trayining. I’ve got to be able to handle myself: the heatproof gloves are on. I’ll probably need them where I’m going. I don’t seriously believe in reincarnation: imagine a fat Buddha traying (sic) to do a front-lever? At least Sufi Dervishes hover.

Coda: If my next-door neighbour - as he posted his sock through my front door the other day - had peeped through the letterbox, he’d have seen my empty oven gloves beneath my pull-up-bar - on the floor - waiting for me to step into them and be-tray myself. Say I’d been gloved-up - airborne? He’d have come eye-to-heatproof glove with me, in a standoff (except that I was horizontal) - a foot-fight between feet-proof gloves and a sub-sock-grenade.  

Boarding an aircraft via the engine! It shouldn't be going on. They'll need more than oven gloves.

Air Stewardess photographs: © Chris Fairclough.