So what I learnt quite recently on being upgraded to Business Class on an Emirates flight from Copenhagen to Dubai is that I’m able to literally and in real life do very many things at the same time, and while I’ve kind of known this about myself for some time because I own children I didn’t fully grasp the range of my abilities until this particular, happy occasion. And the many things I was able to do at the same time were the following, though there might even have been more that I’m forgetting: drink Moët et Chandon from a real champagne glass while at the same time signaling to the girl in the red fedora not to be casual around the refilling of said glass (because thirst); gobble a bowl of hot nuts; scan the menu and try to decide if it would be greedy to make them bring me two of everything; lie prostrate while being massaged by my chair; grin in a maniacal way at my husband; high-five my children, listen to relaxing dolphin sounds while still managing to direct scornful and disparaging glances at the steady trickle of passengers making their mournful pilgrimage past my comfortable, reclining chair-bed to the hell seats of Economy.

It was almost (but not quite because it also made me a bit happy) spoiling my fun having to witness their despair, and I wanted a little bit to say to the lady in the red fedora whilst making a dismissive gesture with my hand, please can you make the poor people not be here? But luckily she was very much on her game as far as the champagne went and it’s hard to be petulant under those circumstances. But the trouble with this thing is that, as we well know, all good things come to an end, and in my particular case which made things very much worse, our journey had two legs, and only the first (shorter) half happened in the party area of the aircraft. For the second (and significantly longer) segment of the journey – that being from Dubai to Cape Town – the people of Emirates didn’t think we were quite fabulous enough to waste any more of their fanciness on the likes of us and so we had no option but, on Boeing #2, to do the walk of shame to cattle class, with some of the very same people I had sneered at – also en route to Cape Town – now looking at us with eyes that said, oh, how the mighty have fallen. And they had. What’s more, they now had a touch of the babbelas.

You know that James song that goes ‘if I’d never seen such riches I could live with being poor?’ Our seven-year-old daughter looked around at the cramped bunker of sadness and shattered dreams which make up any airline’s Economy Class and said in a voice deeply etched with pain, ‘what happened to this place?’ What happened indeed. And the thing is, we wouldn’t have minded our little plastic cups and Barbie-sized bags of pretzels if we hadn’t been confronted with all that wonderfulness to start off with. Even the small polyester blanket that barely makes it to your feet would have been a nice touch if it wasn’t replacing a down duvet covered by one millionty hundred thread count cotton whilst beautiful, red-lipped angels swooped about bearing bottles of Voss and the toilet smelt of candy floss and had a marble sink. I remember a time, not even that long ago, when flying any class to anywhere was more fun than I knew what to do with but I suppose I’ve been corrupted since those days. And now, evermore, I must trundle past the (real) rich people and take my seat together with the lowliest of the low knowing very well what I’m missing even as I beg the steward, Fernando, for just one more tiny drink. So, the moral of the story is this: if you’re ever, for any reason, offered an upgrade on a flight say no if it kills you because it will ruin you for life.