03 For Crying Out Loud! by Jeremy Clarkson

Author:Jeremy Clarkson
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: ePenguin
Published: 2009-05-13T23:00:00+00:00

Nice jet, shame about abroad

Air travel has done more for world peace than any other single entity in the history of mankind. The more countries you visit, the more you understand that people from other cultures and races and places are just like you – except America, obviously – so you’re less likely to want to shoot them.

The reason why there’s been peace in western Europe for more than 60 years has nothing to do with the European Union or NATO and everything to do with Ryanair.

I’d give the chairman the Nobel peace prize, frankly.

But somehow Gordon Brown has got it into his head that aeroplanes are hurting the sky through which they fly and that he must therefore double airport tax. This means the cost of your annual Christmas holiday in Barbados will rise from £9,482 to a staggering £9,487.

Anyway, to mark Mr Brown’s decision to save the world, I decided to go to Budapest. For lunch.

I’ve often said that if I came to power, the first thing I’d do is declare war on Hungary. This is because it’s the only country in western Europe I’ve never visited. And what you don’t know is scary. Hell. Malignant tumours. Strange noises in the house in the middle of the night. Hungary. They’ve always been the same in my book.

So when a friend rang and asked if I’d like to go Budapest, for the day, I said, ‘Er.’ Then he said we’d be going on a private jet so I said, ‘Yes.’

It belonged to a company called Gama Aviation, which charters its fleet out to the likes of Michael and Winner, and it was jolly lovely. But not half as lovely as the airport in Farnborough, Hampshire, where it’s based.

Check-in time is one minute before the scheduled departure. Or one hour afterwards, if you can’t be bothered to get up. It doesn’t really matter because all you have to do is show your passport to a man who, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, was wearing a high-visibility jacket. Perhaps he thought he might be knocked down by a vacuum cleaner.

Whatever, soon we were on board in a big swivelly seat, wondering whether to have our champagne neat or with a swan in it.

After we landed, a woman called Victor introduced us to our driver. He was called Victor too and he only had one word of English, which was ‘moment’. That, in the big scheme of things, was not terribly useful.

For instance, when he parked outside a big hotel in the middle of a rather boring square, and we asked why, he said: ‘Moment.’ Plainly, he was KGB and we were all going to be killed.

But no. After 20 minutes, another Victor arrived and told us to go shopping.

Budapest, it turns out, is the worst shopping city in the whole of the world. Walking down the pedestrianised main street is exactly like walking through the centre of Croydon 40 years ago, except that all the men are sweeping leaves and all the girls are wearing knee-length shorts with turn-ups.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.