" someone notices that the views out of the two sides of the plane do not match up."
Many years ago, a friend who was not a greatly experienced pilot, was flying a few of us from Cairns in Northern Queensland to Burketown on the Gulf of Carpentaria.
After an hour or so of bumpy flying through heat turbulence, I saw the sea off to one side of the plane. ... but it was on the wrong side of the plane. If we're flying west, the near coast of Australia has to be on our starboard side, but the water was on the port side. It took some explaining to the others in our six-seater Piper Cherokee that something was not right.
Eventually the pilot relented and radio-ed for assistance. It turned out that instead of flying us westwards, we had turned south to Townsville...
Dear lord — I'm glad you were there :-) Mind you, the offer of a flight in a plane driven by someone who is "not greatly experienced" feels as easy to turn down as the night when my wife said "Do you want to try some of my home-made absinthe".
'The slip-up: an internal flight in US, where someone notices that the views out of the two sides of the plane do not match up.'
Reminds me of the setup for one of the novels I'll never write: guy on tube shown every day for as long as the reader (and goddamnit the viewer when it gets commissioned) could stand, disembarking from the same door in the same carriage on the same side every day (it's opposite the platform exit). Then one day he's facing the wall and everyone is disambarking behind him. That's it lol. That's in the queue behind the full-on scifi-fantasy mashup plot I'll never write, and the book on memetics that goddamnit I will write before I die.
I love that idea :-) I used something slightly similar in a long-ago short story (so long ago I can't even remember the title) but you should keep pushing on it... lovely uncanny feeling.
I don't know when you wrote the first two but they both seem especially prescient right now. I desperately want to believe right now, but when I look out the two sides of the window, the views do not match up.
The penultimate one reminds me of British weather. We LIKE complaining about it. We also like that it isn't something different, like drought conditions or hurricanes
Many years ago I trained to be a Catholic priest. I ended up in something of a theological/doctrinal face off with a priest who said that the night prayers I had led on Good Friday were not suitable for the retreat, that he felt compelled to bless every room in the house and that what I had done was tantamount to Satanism. Not to my face, mind, but through my friends who laughingly told me about it a week later. After several weeks of back and forth, where I tried to have a meeting with the guy but he had to return to Rome😬 a close friend told me that he had sent him a letter explaining why he had done what he'd done.
His end quite was " if I had to choose between God and the Truth, I choose God"
I never understood it and left my training a few weeks later.
Sorry to be long winded but "truth", Truth and The Truth are things I find aspirational.
But the truth is very important when you want someone else to see it and react to the same reality that you are. Beliefs can make you feel good, and even the worst kind can make you feel more dynamically engaged with the world, but community only develops between those who share the same ones, or make an agreement to put private beliefs aside to operate from some common public baseline. People's seeming inability to do the latter is why the world has been sliding into chaos in recent years. But you know that :)
Why is Dutch Courage even Dutch anyway?
I would Google, it, but I'm going to come up with a hypothesis and believe that instead... ;)
Oh yes, I agree on truth. That was an old note... I swing back and forth on the subject ;-) No idea about the Dutch... but frankly I've been glad of their source of courage from time to time.
Jeez the plane thing. Shades of King’s novella The Langoliers, which I read on a winter storm-disrupted flight across the USA that ended up taking two days. And also, what happens if you board a flight, fall asleep, and wake up…. literally in another world?
Scared the stuffing out of me. The whole flight got a bit Hunger Games, literally - we had snacks (I always travel with padkos) - and I reckon people would have paid good money for the white cheddar popcorn we tried to eat quietly 😬
And following Dutch Idiocy comes the need for hair of the Dutch Shepherd that bit you.
Always.
" someone notices that the views out of the two sides of the plane do not match up."
Many years ago, a friend who was not a greatly experienced pilot, was flying a few of us from Cairns in Northern Queensland to Burketown on the Gulf of Carpentaria.
After an hour or so of bumpy flying through heat turbulence, I saw the sea off to one side of the plane. ... but it was on the wrong side of the plane. If we're flying west, the near coast of Australia has to be on our starboard side, but the water was on the port side. It took some explaining to the others in our six-seater Piper Cherokee that something was not right.
Eventually the pilot relented and radio-ed for assistance. It turned out that instead of flying us westwards, we had turned south to Townsville...
Dear lord — I'm glad you were there :-) Mind you, the offer of a flight in a plane driven by someone who is "not greatly experienced" feels as easy to turn down as the night when my wife said "Do you want to try some of my home-made absinthe".
'The slip-up: an internal flight in US, where someone notices that the views out of the two sides of the plane do not match up.'
Reminds me of the setup for one of the novels I'll never write: guy on tube shown every day for as long as the reader (and goddamnit the viewer when it gets commissioned) could stand, disembarking from the same door in the same carriage on the same side every day (it's opposite the platform exit). Then one day he's facing the wall and everyone is disambarking behind him. That's it lol. That's in the queue behind the full-on scifi-fantasy mashup plot I'll never write, and the book on memetics that goddamnit I will write before I die.
I love that idea :-) I used something slightly similar in a long-ago short story (so long ago I can't even remember the title) but you should keep pushing on it... lovely uncanny feeling.
Also re-reading Spares right now as a comedown from re-reading something huge.
I hope it still reads okay!
Absolutely.
I don't know when you wrote the first two but they both seem especially prescient right now. I desperately want to believe right now, but when I look out the two sides of the window, the views do not match up.
Very true, sadly. They were both from quite a while back... but do seem relevant to now.
Social media is a well of psychic excretions.
Ain't that the truth.
The penultimate one reminds me of British weather. We LIKE complaining about it. We also like that it isn't something different, like drought conditions or hurricanes
Exactly! It may be shit weather, but it's *our* shit weather...
Many years ago I trained to be a Catholic priest. I ended up in something of a theological/doctrinal face off with a priest who said that the night prayers I had led on Good Friday were not suitable for the retreat, that he felt compelled to bless every room in the house and that what I had done was tantamount to Satanism. Not to my face, mind, but through my friends who laughingly told me about it a week later. After several weeks of back and forth, where I tried to have a meeting with the guy but he had to return to Rome😬 a close friend told me that he had sent him a letter explaining why he had done what he'd done.
His end quite was " if I had to choose between God and the Truth, I choose God"
I never understood it and left my training a few weeks later.
Sorry to be long winded but "truth", Truth and The Truth are things I find aspirational.
But I am a bit weird...
Famously so ;-) Yeah, that snippet was from quite a while ago... and I go back and forth on the importance of Truth...
But the truth is very important when you want someone else to see it and react to the same reality that you are. Beliefs can make you feel good, and even the worst kind can make you feel more dynamically engaged with the world, but community only develops between those who share the same ones, or make an agreement to put private beliefs aside to operate from some common public baseline. People's seeming inability to do the latter is why the world has been sliding into chaos in recent years. But you know that :)
Why is Dutch Courage even Dutch anyway?
I would Google, it, but I'm going to come up with a hypothesis and believe that instead... ;)
Oh yes, I agree on truth. That was an old note... I swing back and forth on the subject ;-) No idea about the Dutch... but frankly I've been glad of their source of courage from time to time.
Jeez the plane thing. Shades of King’s novella The Langoliers, which I read on a winter storm-disrupted flight across the USA that ended up taking two days. And also, what happens if you board a flight, fall asleep, and wake up…. literally in another world?
Lord - what an amazing way to read Langoliers!
Scared the stuffing out of me. The whole flight got a bit Hunger Games, literally - we had snacks (I always travel with padkos) - and I reckon people would have paid good money for the white cheddar popcorn we tried to eat quietly 😬