I hate flying. Scares the bejesus out of me. I’ve written about this before, but there are times when it feels like a subject to which it is worth returning. Times like now, when I’m 38,000ft up, three hours into an 11-hour flight, and halfway between Novosibirsk and Omsk. My teeth are aching because I’ve been gritting them for so long, and I’ve just discovered that one of the channels on the in-flight entertainment is showing a camera that lets you see what you would see if you were strapped to the underside of the aeroplane. That’s a lovely touch, isn’t it? I can’t stop watching, in case nobody else is, and so nobody else notices when something falls off.

I’m on the way back from Beijing. I had something pretty close to a panic attack when the doors closed on the outward flight, three days ago. “Eleven hours,” I said to myself. “Here. Stuck. Dark. Can’t get off.” I’m sure plenty of people are as nuts as me. It’s an indulgence. You let it swell, until you think you might scream, and then you wrestle it back under control, so as not to make a scene. I do it with whisky. Just a shot. They won’t give you spirits on Air China, so I’d bought myself a tiny mini-bar bottle at Heathrow. That wasn’t possible on the way back. They did have some in Beijing duty free, but the bloke behind the counter said that they were promotional, and only for people who bought a big bumper bottle of Jamesons. I wasn’t up for that. He’d have thought I had some kind of problem.

Boris: big in China

I was in Beijing, anyway, to learn about a stunning show called Chun Yi: The Legend of Kung Fu for the Arts section. It’s about to arrive at the Coliseum. The Chinese cast and crew are all wildly excited about coming to London, particularly because it means they might get to meet Boris Johnson.

“Seriously?” I said.

“Of course,” said Yana, who was managing my trip. “Everybody knows of Boris. We have invited him. We do so hope he comes!”

“You are talking about Boris?” asked Ricky, the Cantonese photographer, leaning forward from the back of the car. “Ha ha! Boris!”

It wasn’t just them. The man is a sensation, thanks to his charismatic bumbling at the Olympic handover. I doubt it’s exactly what they’re after in their own politicians, but it enchanted them in ours. “I’ve met him,” I kept saying, and my status soared. I didn’t like to mention that it was just the once, at a party, and he called me a bastard.

More from plummet-cam

Only another seven hours to go. Back to the aeroplane plummet-cam. I can see roads down there, and forests. I could probably see an anti-aircraft missile if it came in at the right angle. I wonder how fast they go? I’d change the channel, but the only options are a subtitled Chinese battle film, in which everything happens in slow motion, and that film about Leonardo DiCaprio fighting al-Qaeda. This must be the sixth flight I’ve been on with that film. Who wants to be reminded about al-Qaeda when they are in an aeroplane?

There was a headline I saw on the internet back in the airport: “al-Qaeda to target China”. Where’s the Great Firewall when you need it? It kept me off Facebook, and it wouldn’t let me check up on some fairly esoteric British political blogs. Contrary to my expectations I could read about the unrest in Xinjiang on the BBC or Times Online, or seemingly anywhere else. God, where is Xinjiang? It’s not down there, is it?

Humbled by history

Visit the Forbidden City and you understand why the Chinese can seem so blasé about having made such a hash of the past century. It’s just so old, and big, and they’d had more than a millennium of Imperial dynasties before they even got around to building it. We’re used to thinking of ourselves as heavyweights in the history department, with our churches and castles and our bog- standard houses that happen to be older than America. Next to the Chinese, we’re positively nouveau. It makes a chap feel threatened, and rather competitive. You wander through dappled gardens, and down tiled avenues studded with bronze lions, and watched over by dragons. “I think the Tower of London is quite old,” you find yourself saying. And later, grimly: “Did I mention that I’ve met Boris Johnson?”

Bumpy over Mongolia

Oh good. Turbulence. My favourite. They warned us about this, when we took off. “It may get bumpy,” they said, “over Outer Mongolia.” Fantastic sentence. Could be worse, you think to yourself, wondering how long it would take for help to come if you went down. Could be Timbuktu.

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