I just wanted to share this passage with you. It’s from a novel by a chappy called Paul Micou, The Cover Artist, which I found at the British Council the other week:
Drunk and discombobulated, Oscar Lemoine bounced on to the windswept tarmac of Val d’Argent’s private airport in the middle of a November night, protected from physical harm by an aeroplane. Elizabeth lay curled in a seat next to him. His drunkenness was due to having sat on a Paris runway drinking gin for three hours – after assisting a desperate fellow-traveller in convincing a sympathetic crew member to bend the rules – while the authorities held their collective finger in the air to gauge the winds on the southern coast. Oscar imbibed an even larger amount while airborne because the flight attendants had all gone pale and were hugging each other as if for the last time. On landing, while Oscar held hands with his drunken seatmate and petted Elizabeth’s brow, the smallish and disreputable-looking aeroplane skidded ninety degrees in an unexpected inch of slush, while trying to turn towards the terminal. The craft tipped one of its wheels off the ground, and made most of the passengers scream. The captain quickly apologised; the flight attendants swore and made hand gestures suggesting that the pilot was a booze-soaked incompetent.
It’s a great novel, a cross between Evelyn Waugh and Douglas Adams. Alas, it is now out of print, but there appears to be a few copies at AbeBooks.