By JAMES WOODFORD

This week I got served a hearty meal of Carbon Karma.

I had to go to Melbourne for work and flew out of Canberra on Monday morning. I try not to be a person who goes around feeling guilty about everything. But when I hop into a 737 Airbus and those massive jet engines start to roar I feel like I have a carbon footprint that makes Ian Thrope look as though he is a ballerina en pointe.

There was the added frisson from the fact a Qantas 747 had blown a hernia near Singapore a couple of days earlier.
Even so I arrived in Melbourne safely – the God of What Goes Around Comes Around might say, too easily.
On the way home was when my karma got me.I arrived at Melbourne Airport to be told unapologetically that the only flight that day, back to my home town of Moruya had been cancelled.
I tried to think of a couple of alternatives and ended up deciding to get home the long way – fly to Sydney then back down the coast. Big Mistake.
The Carbon Karma cloud above my head was getting darker by the second and I was even considering a McDonalds smoothie and cheeseburger to see how far I could push the God of Carbon Dioxide.
I got an even bigger jet plane to Sydney than the one I had flown south in, took my seat and looked out of the window at the activity on the tarmac.
And then the Guilt Fairy struck. A man was standing in the aisle with a boarding pass and telling me I was in his seat. Anyone who has flown lately knows what a trial it is to even get to a seat on a plane.
After the striptease and soft erotica of people undressing at the x-ray machines, the rub down from the explosives testing lady and the sniffing by the customs dogs, to be by yourself in a chair takes on a special significance. I got my pass from out of the overhead locker and flashed my ace card, with the correct seat number on it. His had the right seat too. It felt like a game of paper, rock, scissors where we both had clenched our fists. Still, possession is nine tenths of the law and I sat back down, smugly.
An anxious flight attendant came to my chair to tell me I was in the wrong seat and to hand over the boarding pass and my drivers licence. She came back flustered and looking as though I was in deep trouble. ‘This isn’t you,’ she said, worried. Sure enough I had somehow gotten on the plane with the completely wrong name on my boarding pass.
‘You’ll have to get up and stand over there,’ she said pointing to the galley. I stood face-on to my hundreds of fellow passengers and felt a little like waving as they all wondered which Muslim extremist group I belonged to.
Another few minutes passed and I made a joke about what I should hang onto in the galley during the take-off. The attendant didn’t think it was funny.
Finally another attendant and a ground staff representative came over and took my story, went away, made a few more calls and came back and allocated me another seat and boarding pass. ‘Will my bags be on this flight?’ I asked.
‘We’re not sure,’ the attendant replied. ‘But if there’s a problem, explain to the ground staff in Sydney that you are this guy,’ the attendant pointed at the wrong name on my boarding pass.
I got to Sydney and, yes, the flight to Moruya was late as was the taxi to take me home.
It was a good day for the Guilt Fairy, Carbon Karma and the God of Carbon Dioxide