Beware of the overhead cabins

On boarding a flight at Milan’s Malpensa Airport last year, I was taken aback by what happened. Whilst I was speaking to a stewardess about getting a child seat beat for our younger son when suddenly I got an almighty “THWACK!” on the side of the head. A half second passed whilst I tried to come to my senses as to what had happened and then suddenly another “THWACK!”.

I then realised what was going on and managed to take evasive action before being struck a third time. Some idiot a couple of metres further down the aisle was trying to frantically shut an overhead locker which he’d just put his hand luggage in, and my head – since I was still standing at this point (just!) – was getting in the way. Rather than wait until the compartment was full, or rather than first looking to see if anything might prevent him closing the locker, the baffoon was just trying to ram it shut. Anyway, the reason for mentioning this is that I have just been reminded by this rather bewildering event because I stumbled upon this fun video.