24 hours of hell and a nasty sandwich

• By Alison
• 8 December, 2009
• 7 Comments

People like to edit their own memories and cut out a lot of the chaff. This is called selected recall. It means that you just don’t remember quite how awful an event was, beyond the fact that it was awful. This is why I don’t really remember the finer details of childbirth. Although that could also be down to the fact that I was totally stoned at the time.

Plane trips and childbirth have a lot in common. There is the mess, the fuss, the long drawn out process, the pain and of course the screaming. What a way to begin a holiday!

It took us 22 hours and 40 minutes to fly from London to Sydney. And by us, I mean myself and two small girls. Everyone loves a child on a plane, don’t they!

As we boarded the plane, each with our bright pink carry one bag, I was determined to ask somone to lift my bag up for me, since I am not supposed to lift for 6 weeks after the surgery. I looked in the row behind us – 80 years in the shade. The row in front – angry domestic in progress. To the side… person rolling their eyes at me for being in the way. Forgetting all my resolutions, I lifted and shoved. The bag was stowed and we sat down. The kids were already arguing over who gets the window seat, and black marks were quickly given out in a low hiss. But seconds later all that was forgotten.

The girls love to fly. They love the plane and all the associated rituals. They love the trays in the seat backs and the personal televisions. Miss Trouble Pants is fervently hoping that the game she played last time is still available. She’s also a bit of an experienced jet setter, and is thus a bit too world weary. “Oh” she says “Airline food again. *sigh* It’s too awful.” She rolls her eyes. Shut up – the children’s meals are better than what I’ll be getting!

But food aside, they are hopping with excitement as we wait for take off. I put them back into their seatbelts about 17 times. Why can’t I lock the seatbelts at one length? What is going to happen when we crash if these things don’t stay tight? Oh wait, it’s all academic isn’t it. If we crash we all get smashed to a jammy paste, whether we’ve seatbelted and braced or not. Why even bother with the life jackets? I guess it’s to retrieve the bodies from the water.

Stop.

Stop it.

Stop thinking about things like that!

Quick prayer. “Please God, take care of us. Please keep us safe. Amen. And God, sorry I’ve not called since… um… since last time I was sitting in a plane about to take off.”

God replies “You owe me.” That’s very true. (Caveat – God did not actually reply to me.)

We’re on one of those new A380 planes, flying with Qantas. The lovely thing about being on a new plane is that the seats look and feel pleasantly fresh, and there is a good chance that the recline function hasn’t been smashed to bits by over zealous fatties.

The bad thing about being on this plane is that – to be honest – it’s a great big albatross that practically has square dimensions. Don’t tell me this thing can fly, it’s obviously impossible!

Apparently my aeronautical asserations are a pile of crap, because the plane can, and does take off. And stay in the air.

The first leg is the longest part of the flight. 14 hours sitting in a cramped chair with a tv touching your nose when the person in front reclines his chair abruptly into you. 

When I travel from England to Australia, one of the first things I do is set my clock to destination time, and then try and behave accordingly. If that means a bottle of wine for breakfast to get me off to sleep, then so help me God (he did) then that’s what I will do!

That method doesn’t work when you have kids. Well – I am sure it works very well. Just not so popular with the people around you.

I’ve got no qualms about drugging my kids. I’ve come onboard with piriton at the ready to help them doze off. My plan is to try and get them to sleep for the last 8 hours of this first leg, and then stay awake for the whole of the second leg. I don’t expect it to all run as planned, but the fact that the girls have had two late nights previously, I am hoping for a good chance at that early sleep.

Plus my girls understand that system, seasoned travellers that they are. They don’t argue that they don’t feel tired, they just do their best to fall asleep.

I’ve flown both with kids and without. I know it’s every other passenger’s nightmare to have a kid near them on a flight. And it’s the parent’s responsibility to make sure their kids behave themselves. It’s just that some people kinda suck. One of those people is sitting across from us with her pre- 2 year old girl.

I know the child is under 2, since she did take off and landing on her mother’s lap with the extra seatbelt attachement. And I know what it’s like to travel with that age. They really don’t understand the wider picture, and have no way of empathising with others. They don’t have an internal filter, every emotion just sprays out like an out of control hose that someone let go of. That’s totally natural for that age. But that doesn’t excuse a parent who lets the hose splash about without trying to grab hold of it and divert the water.

I am sitting in the middle seat of our three, with both heads on my lap. They try their hardest to fall asleep, and after some pillow arranging and fidgetting, finally Miss Comic Relief is twitching at the threshold of sleep. She’s got the better position, with the window side, and she’s smaller. Plus she’s ended up with two pillows, so she drifts off with 5 hours potential sleep to have.

Miss Trouble Pants on the other hand, is fidget mad. The fingers are on the face, itchy cheek, itchy nose. The feet are hanging over the edge of the seat, failing to stay put under the arm rest. The metal parts of the seatbelt are sticking into her back, so I try and arrange soft toys at strategic places. I stroke her hair and sing lullabies. But the plane is so noisy, she can’t help but be distracted.

There is a crackling sound coming out of the air vents that is constant. There is an echo to that crackling sound coming from the front row of our section, as a bunch of heifers chow down on something that involves crackly wrappings. I reassure myself that even if they do gain half their weight from the chocolate and chips that they are stuffing into their faces, it’s merely weight transferance from one form to another, and can’t affect the balance of the plane. Not unless they all move about at once, which they can’t do – being the size of Houston. (This is totally imaginary, since I can’t SEE those people! Turns out they are a couple with a child, and are of normal size. They are still crackly and annoying though).

Miss Trouble Pants finally finds a comfortable position on me, and starts to fidget less. I am hoping for about 3 hours sleep for her now. But this is when the aforementioned 2 year old near us starts to kick off.

Her mother has headphones on and is watching something. She doesn’t hear her child start to use the video remote as a drum on the floor of the plane. The rest of us DO notice this. We all start to send violent messages of dismemberment to her using telepathy. Strangely, it seems to fail to work. What does get her attention is when the child tumbles into the aisle.

Time and time again this child makes drumming noises which the mother fails to notice. Then the child starts to shout. Finally the mother decides to take her for a walk. Peace and quiet for the shortest of times until they come back. Which is far too soon.

Now the child is standing on her chair, facing the back of the plane. “I see lots of people mummy!” She shouts. Mummy doesn’t even say “Shhh”.

The child starts to climb up over the chair, and shake the back of it. Mother is standing there beside this child doing nothing. The woman sitting behind the child is now watching an earthquake, no matter what she was actually viewing. Her tv is being shaken back and forward by this child who is also jumping on the chair. The mother doesn’t stop her.

I hear someone hiss “SHHHH” and realise it’s me.

Finally, the mother takes the child for another walk, and mine finally falls asleep. Bliss. But she’s only got a chance of 2 hours sleep now. And after 1 hour her breakfast is brought to the seat.

And I want to slap the woman with the 2 year old. I don’t think I am alone either.

I know it’s hard to keep a child happy on a plane. But you have to TRY. There is a baby in the bulkhead row who wakes up and cries. I hear his mother soothe him. He never cries for long. She might be doing what I did the time I travelled with Miss Trouble Pants when she was 6 months old. I was breastfeeding her, so every time she cried I stuck my boob in her mouth. This worked a treat and kept her quiet for the whole trip. Made my boobs think I’d just had another 4 children though, so when we landed and I couldn’t keep up the demand to match the overloaded supply I had to suffer through the whole engorged boobs thing again.

The worst travelling was when she was 14 months old. We spent a lot of time walking up and down the aisles, or hanging out in the galley. But we did not just LET her disturb others.

This is why I am so angry with this woman for not calming and controlling her child.

But this hump is now past us. The first leg of the flight ends, and we refuel in Singapore. We get back on the plain for a 7 hour flight. Now the girls must stay awake, so they can take full advantage of the entertainment system.

I can’t give qantas enough kudos for their entertainment. The seatback tvs in this new plane are an excellent size (for viewing at 14 inches, certainly!) And they are also touch screens. The children get the hang of navigating through them quickly, and there is kids only menu that is more vibrant and just has the stuff relevant to children on it. There are plenty of games, masses of movies and tv shows.

And because you can pause, rewind, fast forward – I can even watch movies myself, inbetween dealing with the girls.

What the makers of this plane forgot to provide though, was some hooks on the back of the chair for those little snack bags that they give you. These are great – a bottle of water, dried fruit, mints and a chocolate bar. But after taking out the water, the bag inevitably gets placed on the seat beside you and then get slides its way under your buttocks. Later you retrieve the flattened package from your behind, and contemplate whether a squashed mars bar is worth attempting to eat.

Apparently, it almost always is. It IS chocolate, after all!

Miss Trouble Pants was right about the airline food though. At the end of the second leg we get a meal that is classed as “light refreshment” and involves what is apparently a chicken sandwich. It was downright awful, and none of us ate it. There is something quite wrong about a white bread sandwich made in Singapore. I hope the 2 year old’s mother ate it and got dysentry.

No wait, I don’t wish that.

Just some flatulence then. She deserves at leat that.

I only hope she’s not on the flight home if she’s farting like that!