All too infrequently, during these recession months, am I allowed to travel in the very front of an aircraft. But whenever I do, I take great pleasure when one of the flight attendants delivers the food and drink in a curious zig-zag manner: handing the champagne to the lady in 1A, then the kir royale to the man in 2C, then the gin-and-tonic to 2A, the hot tea to 3C, and so on back and forth all the way down until she reached the curtain. The first attendant I spotted doing this told me, brightly, that her technique was based on a writing and ploughing technique known to the Ancient Greeks as boustrophedon - the word derives from ox and turning - and which is defined as written alternately from left to right and from right to left, like the course of a plough in successive furrows.
All fine and dandy, and fantastically interesting to Classicists maybe. But I wonder: what about the poor guy in 1C. He seems to lose out, and probably wonders why he ever paid to sit in the front of the plane in the first place.
