You may or may not know (what a pointless phrase that is) that I started a new job yesterday. I know it, because I feel the tiredness. I was up at 4.15 AM to get the morning flight from Cardiff to Belfast. Quarter past four - it's a hideous thing to have to get up that early in the morning, especially after two weeks off. That's only fifteen minutes after four o'clock in the morning. As I showered, I thought to myself "even if I stayed in bed for another three hours, lots of people would still consider that an early rise." Have I laboured the point enough yet? No? I thought not.

So, I drove to the airport, and parked the car in the long-stay car park. Before I parked, I noticed a few odd things. Firstly, there was a wheelchair parked alongside a Citroen Picasso. I thought that it would be waiting for its occupant to alight from the car, but the car was desolate, and had been all night judging by the condensation on the inside, and the dew on the outside. Weird. If the car's owners had left the car to go to the airport, wouldn't they have taken the wheelchair? And if they were using the wheelchair to come back to the car, where were they now? Also, next to a Land Rover Discovery lay a small red pillow. You might have thought it could have come from the wheelchair, but it really was quite a distance away. This is all very puzzling when it is before six in the morning and you are me. However, these shocking events only served to better prepare me for the further shock of parking next to a Vectra which had been left with the driver's window wide open. (It is not uncommon for the electric windows on Vectras to open randomly by themselves - it happened on at least two hired Vectras whilst they were in my possession.) Of course, the window being down meant that the car's interior motion sensors generously incorporated the space outside the driver's window into their zone of protection, and dutifully triggered the alarm as soon as I stepped out of my car. I did my best to ignore it as I dragged my bags out of the boot, but couldn't help thinking sarcastically to myself that there was no more inappropriate (or likely) time for me to be arrested than on the first day of my new job.

A little time, a latte and a muffin later, I was safely in my seat on the plane and we were taking off. Taking off and landing are my favourite parts of a flight. The take-off is when you really appreciate the immense power in those turbofan engines, as the acceleration forces you back into your seat. There’s not much else like it, apart from a motorbike. I do miss my motorbike - my lovely Honda VFR 750. I love acceleration. But on a motorbike, you have to change gear when the rev counter moves into the red area, whereas the aeroplane just keeps charging on relentlessly. It’s magnificent.

I remember the first time I flew. I’m not sure why, but I was completely amazed at how smooth it was - I must have expected it to be bouncy or something. I remember thinking that if you could somehow miss the take-off (by being drugged or similar), you could be forgiven for thinking that the plane was stationary, when in fact you were hurtling through the stratosphere faster than a couple of CDs containing sensitive information leaving the hands of a well-known freight carrier. Or maybe at the same speed - who knows?

As we left the ground, dawn was breaking and the sky was turning the most beautiful shades of blue. It faded from almost black nearer the ground to a sublime dull cyan sort of colour in the mid-regions, before fading back to a dark blue higher up. The subtlety in the colour gradients was amazing – no photograph could do it justice; it was for the naked eye only.

I looked out over Cardiff and Penarth far below, and was enjoying the view when it was interrupted by the plane banking sharply to the right. (I am sadly unfamiliar with aeronautical terms – maybe should that have been ‘to starboard’.) That maneuver was shortly followed by more banking to the left, and then to the right again. Over the course of the next few minutes, the pilot changed course about six hundred and fifty times. I exaggerate of course – the actual figure was nearer four hundred. All the banking caused me to think of a preposterous theory.

In my preposterous theory, I see flight paths as roads, and (I assume) flights from Cardiff to Belfast nearly always take the same flight paths, in much the same way that Lorries going from Cardiff to London would usually take the same route each time. I have no real idea about this, but it seemed to me that someone (I know not whom) could charge airlines for the use of the flight paths, in much the same way as vehicle owners pay road tax.

I was flying on BMI baby, and it occurred to me that maybe [insert name of budget airline here] saves money by taking the cheaper flight paths, or by avoiding allotted flight paths altogether. If a monster truck driver wanted to avoid paying road tax, he might consider driving the cross-country route to work to avoid being caught by bridge-mounted tax-dodger-spotting cameras. In the same way, the pilot on my flight seemed to be trying to dodge all established flight paths. The theory went some way to explaining the meandering route he was taking, anyway. Alternatively, perhaps he was sticking to the windy back roads instead of bothering with the motorway. Or maybe he was just bored, and was sitting in the cockpit making loud “mmmeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaawwwwww” world-war II fighter plane noises as he threw us all about.

After those minor alterations to our course, the flight became more pleasant, and the cabin was filled with the smell of hot bacon and cheese rolls. My mouth watered, but I had packed my wallet into my coat in the overhead luggage compartment, and I wasn’t getting up and blocking the aisle just so that I could have a bacon bap. I reflected instead on my preposterous theory and the composition of aeroplanes and clouds.

Aeroplane wings are incredibly complex things, did you know? They are covered in at least twenty different flaps of various shapes and sizes – flaps that open and close, extend and retract, lower and raise, spit and polish and generally save the world, at least from the point of view of the people on the plane. Their main purpose is to generate lift, but they also manage to carry thousands of gallons of fuel, and effortlessly suspend tons and tons of engine. The landing gear is also contained within the wings, and all the mechanisms that are required to raise and lower those wheels. When the aircraft is accelerating for take-off, the wings transmit all the thrust from the engines to the main body of the plane. In flight, the wings suspend the fuselage between them, and on landing, the wings bear the impact of landing and transmit the reverse thrust of the engines to the body. This happens numerous times, every day. Aeroplane wings aren’t like cars, which are smooth and polished, and painstakingly free of unnecessary features. They are full of bolts, screws, rivets and painted arrows that you just wouldn’t see on a car. Looking at the engine mounts as we flew, it seemed miraculous to me that the engines don’t just fall off pathetically every time they produce some thrust, or when the plane lands. The engineering is marvellous – it is a very fine line between making the plane too strong and heavy, and making it too light and weak.

I was looking out of the window pondering this when I became aware that the wing I was watching was flapping. Not a huge flap, but the far end had a peak-to-peak amplitude of around a few feet. We were encountering a slight turbulence, and it brought me back to my road theory. It was as if we were definitely on the cheap roads today. The ones that all the big heavy goods vehicles drive on, creating potholes and puddles – the ones that everyone else avoids. Those roads were ours today, and the Boeing 737 bounced in and out of the potholes with aplomb. The tops of the clouds below were lumpy – that must have been the reason for it. I remembered my little girl asking me recently if clouds taste of candy floss, and momentarily wondered what would happen if a two-meter diameter turbofan engine travelling at nearly five hundred miles-per-hour hit a pillow of candy floss half a kilometre across. I decided that it wouldn’t be pretty, felt glad that clouds are only water and ice droplets, and dismissed the whole candy floss idea from my mind before sheer raspberry-flavoured panic set in.

We landed safely (as you can tell, because I’m blogging, and it’s not from beyond the grave), and I got a taxi to take me the twenty miles or so to the office. I sat in the front beside the driver, who was a chatty kind of guy. I didn’t mind that at all – the more he talked, the less I had to. He said some interesting and scary things, and I’ll tell you next time about what he had to say. I won’t trouble and confuse you with further detail about the inner workings of my mind today. The next time you fly again though, check out the wings, and see how hard they work while you either relax or grip the arms of the seat with set jaw and white knuckles. You’ll be surprised.