14 Sep. Or perhaps 15th September. I do not know, for I could have crossed the midnight longitude somewhere beneath me on the flight within the last couple of hours.

Suffering from a stiff neck, sudden boredom and a profound lack of interest in the in flight entertainment, I eventually gave up and made my way to the back of the flight. In the lavatory, I inspected my newly shaven face again. Hideous, I concluded. The way a moustache is thought of as something distasteful inabiting your upper lip, the absence of one, after I had lovingly and painstakingly cultivated a beard, seemed equally distasteful in the present. And then there was the matter of the hair, but I put it away.

Standing behind all the seats gazing at the aisle, my eyes slowly calmed down and began to observe. The old girl had her aisle signs lit by yellow light of the loveliest deep hue, the kind that brings to mind suppers being eaten in cosy homes after dusk. The overhead cabins were flat and geometrical, and this geometry extended to the signs themselves. Each was a rectangular box the size of a long biscuit container, split into three parts. On either ends, looking like steam engines pushing and pulling some hill train, were no-smoking signs permanently set at “forbidden”. In the middle, in an unassuming sans serif were the words “Lavatories Aft”. A few places behind it was its twin, casting a similar glow around it, while in the distance one could make out their cousins guarding the middle and the fore of this great craft.

The aching sense of a bygone time broke once you looked down. Flickering screens, each seeking to placate their owner to their utmost ability, with one movie after another set in bluish white light. They roared silently together, as if proudly lighting up a city they had built for themselves. Dwayne Johnson gazed out of one, and Bruce Willis glowered out of another. In the third one, flight status was being displayed in a typeface meant to be proper, precise and to leave no doubts. Time to destination: two hours and three minutes.

From the back they now looked like the faces of a clamouring crowd, each with an emotion of its own. But while they were plenty, they were still dim. The main cabin lights had been long turned out, and one by one as people drifted into sleep, they started disappearing. Amidst the riotous flickering of a thousand screens, and the continuous boom of the 747 engines over a moonless night, our little cabal had the lavatory lights for our north stars. Steady and unassuming, they shone a reassuring stillness as we continued our way acoss the Atlantic.