BY RALPH STEADMAN
MARCH 23, 1983
Plants don’t travel. Well, that’s for sure. They don’t join clubs and they don’t get into traffic jams. They drink, they sway in the wind, and they sing. “Be my friend,” they say, “don’t ask me to be a business associate or I will wilt.” Plants do not threaten, either, but they do bear grudges.
They ask questions, but there are no answers.
I am about to usurp your right to own a plant and expect it to survive as though it did not feel.
I recently underwent a promotional tour for my new book, The Aspirin and Why I Still Get Headaches. While still under sedation I purchased a plant, one whose characteristic reaction on coming within hosepipe distance of a promotional tour representative with a heart of gold is to bend backwards and hide inside its own roots. The rep would in his cups open his heart to you and gain nothing but sympathy and understanding even though you would feel in your heart contemptuous disdain.
Mind over matter carries weight, and the individual hellbent on a course of self-aggrandizement usually manages to overcome any cringing nausea on one’s own behalf in the rush and whirl of promoted self-importance.
Plants, on the other hand, even if purchased in transit, with love, fail to make it to the next check-in counter. “What’s that?” will say a very smart, trim check-in clerk, a sort of water hydrant containing pesticides. “That cannot be sent through here,” she continues, her face the colour of uncooked red mullet. The plant, visibly bruised by such treatment, and lacking the confidence that comes from owning a ticket, trembles visibly. “You heartless swine!” you may well retort, “Don’t you realize that the dignity of a plant can be offended just like yours? It’s like getting forty pounds of excess baggage on your pretty moot, Madam,” though that is never said in an aggressive way, of course. More in a kind of pleading way.
It never works. Forms are produced and six months later, if you are lucky, you may be summoned to collect from a prefabricated office erected inside a wire-netted compound, a plant pot, containing nothing more than half the compost it once had and the bureaucratically murdered brown stump, beyond hope.
Nothing!
MIND OVER MATTER CARRIES WEIGHT, AND THE INDIVIDUAL HELLBENT ON A COURSE OF SELF-AGRANDIZEMENT USUALLY MANAGES TO OVERCOME ANY CRINGING NAUSEA ON ONE’S OWN BEHALF IN THE RUSH AND WHIRL OF PROMOTED SELF-IMPORTANCE
And as if that were enough, there will be an import levy and handling charge. And that is terrible.
Reverse the process. ” All right then,” you say, “send me as baggage and the plant can have my seat.” There was no turning back when the check-in clerk agreed with a smile, or was it a leer? I was roughly lifted, or did I climb stupidly onto the baggage weigh-in? I paid my excess baggage. A button was pressed and I moved off the scales crouching and on to the conveyer that runs under the counter. Twenty yards later I plunged through a rubber flap into blackness with only a faint light some-where beyond.
At this point I gave up feeling responsible for myself . . . Rough hands grabbed me as if my arms were mere stems. My clothes were pulled and scuffed and rumpled like the leaves of a rubber plant. One, two, three, clump! I found myself lying face-down and spread-eagled across a baggage trolley, waiting for flight LH 485 for Brussels next to my hand luggage containing a my papers . . .
That was five years ago, and from that moment my life was changed and I became kind of a vegetable.
I came to know the meaning of the word “reject”.
Since I never saw my plant again, I never claimed. I spent the first week going around on the baggage ramps. When they finally lifted me off I was. severely dehydrated, incoherent, and feeling pretty insecure.
It’s not surprising. There are fifteen 485 flights to Brussels in a day, which meant that I had been ignored or rejected one hundred and five times without even moving from the place I had come to rest seven days before.
Only once was I turned over, by a sunburned returnee looking for a name tag on my person. I bit him.
My hand luggage was claimed by a Ceylonese brunette with a religious bullet hole set in her forehead.
Since I now had no identity and did not speak any identifiable language, unless I had been trying to speak Belgian the whole time, I was dumped in the end compartment of a Dexion luggage rack in the lost property office at Brussels airport, out of the sun. I began to wilt. The weeks that followed were the loneliest of my life.
Sooner or later, someone would ask questions or do a spring clean. With any luck I would be deported or at worst end up in a charity sale of unclaimed property.
I survived on lost food parcels and half-drunk coffee out of plastic beakers.
When I finally began to speak it was in response to the attendant who greeted me daily with a curt “bonjour” as though he recognized something of himself in in my appearance but wasn’t sure.
