Leaving, on a jet plane. Hope the food is better than last time.

• By Alison
• 29 November, 2009
• 14 Comments

So, it is exactly one week until I will be leaving on a jet plane. All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go.

Well, almost.

And to further destroy the illusion, I DO know when I’ll be back again.

And I WON’T be lonesome, because I’ll have two children with me, to keep me company on the plane, to constantly want to go to the loo, need help working out the seatback games, and want me to get the bag down YET AGAIN to find something new.

Won’t THAT be fun.

Mr Boxer Shorts, on the other hand, will be tarting around town for a week like some kind of fricking BACHELOR and then flying out by himself a week later.

Him being on a completely different plane to us actually makes little difference to the whole travelling scenario, since he always sticks the headphones on and settles down to watch a movie the minute he gets on the plane. So actually, this way I get to travel with 2 children instead of 3.

So I wasn’t completely lying when I said I was all packed – we very nearly are. And right now I am working on THE MOST essential part of the travel accessories – the children’s entertainment bag.

I am actually disappointed that the seatback TV has got so good in planes now. Because when it comes to packing the entertainment bag for two small girls, I really ROCK at it.

What I don’t rock at soooo much is remembering to put it in the car before we leave…

Let me tell you a little story!

Three years ago we went out to Sydney for Christmas just as we’re doing now. I packed a carry on bag for the girls that was simply the dogs bollocks in terms of contents. There was plasticine, putty, polly pocket and puzzles. For some reason I was really living in the “p”s. There were also colouring books, pencils, pens, chalk, mini blackboards, etch-a-sketch, scratch-a-doodle, dominoes, magnetic hangman and magnetic snakes and ladders. There were story books with accompanying ipods filled with ME reading the stories (with little “dings” to indicate when to turn the page!). There were also other audio books and nursery rhymes to listen to.

And there was Pyriton, to put the buggers to sleep.

The bag was so heavy, because of the books in it – that I was going to have to pretend it was only half that hard to pull along. It was sitting on the kitchen bench, a-waiting to go.

We were half way to the airport, being driven by my father-in-law, when I suddenly said “Did you pack the pink bag that was in the kitchen?”

“No” says Mr Boxer Shorts.

At this point, I began to wail. There was gnashing of teeth, there was howling, there was “no no no no no no no NO NO NO NO NO NO!!” There was a good deal of crying. My life was ruined. Pretty much.

“There is nothing we can do about it now, so just stop acting like an idiot” says Mr Boxer Shorts. Wrong thing to say to a hysterical woman – or in hindsight – the RIGHT thing to say.

I got on the phone. I rang my neighbours who were now in possession of the house key in order to collect the mail. I asked them to go over to the house and see if the bag was there. It was. I asked them to call a cab and see if they could get it sent to the airport. They could – and they did.

So there we were – sitting in the most God Awful traffic jam on the way to heathrow, with somewhere – half an hour behind us – one of our bits of luggage.

The traffic was so bad that I had to call the airport and ask if I could check in over the phone. Apparently not. But they got the message that we were coming.

We finally got there and checked in. Stunningly, my message had got far enough down the line to ensure that they’d held the bulk head seats for us. We had about 45 minutes until take-off.

And we were still missing one bag.

“We’ll wait until half past.” I said, gamely. Thinking that it was obviously never going to arrive.

At 25 past I got a call – the cab was here. He also wanted money. Mr Boxer Shorts ran out, paid him £40 (£40!!!), and got the bag. We dashed through customs, the plane was boarding, we dashed on, we sat down.

We breathed again.

As the plane levelled out, I opened the magic bag of stuff. I lined up something for each girl to play with. I sat back and relaxed. Did you know that children have very VERY short attention spans?

“Mummy, I want to play with something else now” said Miss Trouble Pants.

57 seconds down, 23 hours and 3 seconds to go. Holy crap!

And on it went like that, all through the flight. They played with almost nothing for longer than 5 minutes. Mr Boxer Shorts slept and watched 3 movies. I played the role of entertainment recycler.

That was 3 years ago. I don’t have to pack so much these days. Fortunately, now the inflight entertainment is much more advanced. You can pause, rewind and fast forward what you want to watch. You NEVER have to wait for the movie to start again on the preset timer. 

Plus at least one of the girls is a fully fledged and capable book reader. For the other one, I’ve stumbled over a simply fantastic site full of audio books from those wonderful old 78 records we used to get when I was a kid (and a lot BEFORE my time I might add!) called kiddie records weekly. I’ve downloaded about 20 of them to itunes, including the record sleeve artwork. 

And the girls also have a Nintendo DS each, with about 12 games. I wonder how long those batteries will last?

 Not long enough, that’s for sure!

Photo credit: SC Fiasco