Now, if I say we’ve just come back from Europe, I don’t expect you to be impressed. Sympathy is more valid.

It may well be a function of age, but it has taken me about two weeks to get over the return trip. Thirty-six hours from door to door. Twenty-one hours in the air.

The buttocks lost all sensation after seven. By 14, everything hurt.

The eyeballs felt they were hanging out on springs. The stomach didn’t know if it was breakfast time (again). And the brain was sick of trying desperately to find a way to switch off until the woman in the middle seat signalled her intention to go to the toilet for the fifth time in an hour. Or the flight attendant had rammed my knee with a trolley somewhere over Afghanistan. But it was the seats which killed me this time.

Look, I’ll be honest. In another life I used to report on the aviation industry for a big metropolitan newspaper and life was such fun. You’d fly into Tullamarine, greet the family, exchange baggage and head back into the departure lounge for another flight. I have been on dozens and dozens of flights of all sorts to all sorts of places. Most often in Cattle Class, and rarely in Business.

There was one flight to London in which British Airways chucked the mob of reporters in First Class. It ruined me forever and I doubt if BA will ever do it again.

But the seats were tolerable. There was ample leg room, plump padding, lots of space in the seat-back pockets, and lots of fresh air.

That last one reveals a curiosity about modern international flights. It is claimed that you’re more likely to pick up a bug on a flight today (I did) than you were back in the 1980s … because of smoking.

People were allowed to smoke on planes back then – disgusting as that now sounds – but it meant the air was circulated at far greater volumes than now. So, germs hang about longer now.

The seats have changed. In the 1970s, the seat pitch – the distance between one seat and another – was 87.5cm. That’s enough legroom for people up to two metres tall.

In the 1980s, the airlines began chasing dollars, and the seat pitch dropped to an average of 82cm. Now, the average is 77cm. In the US, the average is 70cm, suitable for the average 12-year-old.

This has also been accompanied by making the actual seats thinner, so instead of plump cushioning, it’s now much harder material. More like garden furniture than lounge chairs.

Also, with more space taken up by seat-back entertainment screens and pockets stuffed with advertising “magazines”.

This all means that if the person in front of you puts their seat back as far as it goes, the screen is almost rubbing on your nose and the seat tray rams you in the tummy. God help you if someone in-board of you wants to go to the loo. You have to perform human origami to get out.

Add to that the fact that travellers tend to be bigger these days and you begin to get a picture of us stacked and racked like 300 number 12 Steggles chickens in a supermarket deli oven.

International travel used to be romantic. People used to dress up. Now, it has all the allure of a visit to the dentist. Only, the dental chairs are more comfortable.

WAYNE GREGSON