Speedos In The Atlantic

The Brazilian military has recovered the tail section of the ill-fated Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic ocean the other week. For someone who is not entirely comfortable with air travel, this story has really terrified me. I’m ok for the majority of a flight but get a little uneasy come take off, a fit of turbulence, landing or plummeting into the sea. Whenever the pilot starts his descent I always put on Mogwai’s “Mogwai Fear Satan”, after many flights I decided this is the song I’d most like to die to.

What I found most interesting about the recovery of the debris is that it was discovered by a man wearing speedos. I’ve heard that speedos are very popular in Brazil, but surely not popular enough to be issued out by the military. This diver is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, I’ve never donned my arm bands (I’m not a very good swimmer, you’ll regularly find me holding up the traffic in the swimming pool lanes)and gone for a splash there but I imagine it is mighty cold. Cold oceans certainly aren’t ideal for wearing speedos, they’re better suited for atmospheric diving suits.

For me this has become the true mystery of the story, not how the plane came to crash into the sea, but how Fabio (Fabio Capello likes to wear speedos, so this seems a suitable alias for him ) came to be wearing speedos in the middle of the ocean.

I like to think that he just got up that morning and knew that if he found that plane the world’s media would be interested in him. He spent a few hours I front of the mirror trying on various outfits, frog man suit, Ian Thorpe style all in one swimming costume, fancy dress clown outfit he’d rented out a few days previous, but none where right. Then the door bell rang, his lift to work had arrived, “Balls to it, I’ll just have to go in my speedos.”