Loose screws and a meal

The cheap flight, which turned out to be more expensive than first promoted, lived up to its name, to a degree that was slightly disturbing...

The Boeing (if it actually was a Boeing) 737 was the oldest looking aeroplane I've ever had the oppertunity to board. It was so old, I kid you not, that the paint was peeling from the fusilage and the ceiling (or roof... I don't know what the top of the inside of a plane is called) was coming undone.
The seats were skanky false leather which was fraying at the edges and the trays kept falling down.

Basically it looked like the cheapo flight was in a plane the cheapo company had bought from Air Kandahar. A quick dash of cheap paint and voila!... a new business was created.

I'm not a fussy person. Truly, I am not and normally I wouldn't waste a stewardess' time, but as I was sitting plucking at the fraying false leather and looking at the fantasy-like realm of clouds floating beneath me (and presumably above some picturesque English village) I saw something move.
I took a closer look (well, I pushed my face up against the window) and saw little creatures trapped between the inside and the outside window. I first of all thought that it was one of these little beasties which had moved. But it wasn't. They were all dead.

It was then that I noticed that something was moving on the wing and as I sat pondering how aircraft stay in the air at an upwards angle (when moving at a steady speed) I saw a screw come undone and whizz off earthbound at a screw-shattering speed.
I can't be sure, but I reckon my eyes opened slightly wider.

Obviously I wasn't bothered about who the screw might hit, I mean it's only the English down there after all, but I did get slightly worried that the wings were seemingly screwed together (rather than bolted, welded and glued) and that the screws were equally seemingly coming undone.
And thus for the first time in my flying history I pressed the "call stewardess button". Amazingly quickly a beautiful young women was standing at my side.
"How may I be of assistence?" she asked in a friendly tone.
"I think your wings may be coming undone." I answered, trying not to look at her breasts, a problem that has been reoccuring since I left India.
"Pardon me?" she asked in a friendly tone.
"One of the screws just departed in a frenzy." I answered looking at her feet.
"Oh, don't worry about that," she answered in a friendly tone, "that happens all the time." and she walked away to the next customer, who, I suppose, had less interesting questions to ask.

And so I took a closer look at the wing. And sure enough, some of the screws were painted in cheapo grey, but about half of them were bright and shiny metallic of nature.
And there were a couple of holes, were I imagine the mechanics still had to replace the lost screws.

Well, if the stewardess wasn't going to be worried about a loose screw, then I sure as hell wasn't going to worry about it either.
I can only guess that it was an unimportant part of the wing or something.

Anyways, the plane landed safe and soundly and I've had my first of many helpings of fish 'n' chips.
Tomorrow I'm going to look for a national security number. Seemingly they float around the beaurocratic windmill of Britain and they are needed for that dirtiest of words: work.