Travelling with (other people’s) children

Every now and then, sometimes even quite late in life, people discover they have a latent talent.  This could be ambidextrousness, double-jointedness, being able to wiggle their ears, touch their noses with their tongues, throw their voices, play the banjo, do the splits, ventriloquism, ESP or even having magical and/or healing powers.   Sometimes this is useful and can have a huge practical benefit both for oneself and others.  I discovered my latent talent just a couple of months ago.  I think it could prove to be very useful indeed.  Lucrative even.

 

·         About a year ago I was making a transatlantic flight in business class at great personal expense, and had made the mistake of pre-booking myself into a window seat in the second row from the front.  This was a huge error on my part, because I remembered, too late, that all airlines always reserve the front row (which you can’t pre-book) for parents with small children.  In other words, the passengers most likely to disturb everybody else and have paid the least for their tickets are guaranteed the best seats.  (Why?  Give me one strong Moscow Mule with a lot of ice, a plate of food and a pillow and I’m as good as gold.  Silent.  Asleep.  No trouble at all. So why can’t I be rewarded with the comfiest place?  Eh?  Eh??)

 

The people in front of me had a small baby with them, which had the biggest and healthiest set of lungs in the whole wide world.  For all I know, by now it has claimed the record for youngest person to scale Mount Everest without oxygen.  The crying started even before we took off from St Lucia and continued into baggage reclaim at Gatwick and beyond.  A solid eight and a half hours folks.  One of the benefits of flying business class is the extra seat recline you get and these parents took full advantage of it.  Really.  For the entire flight both of their seats were reclined so far back that the howling child’s head was practically in my lap, propped as it was over its adoring father’s shoulder.  I know this because my best red cashmere sweater got covered in baby drool and baby snot.  Also it kept chucking its (completely ineffective) dummy at me, and then screaming for me to return it.  After about the fifth or sixth or twentieth time, I put the dummy in my handbag, shut my eyes and tried to ignore the ensuing uproar. Like the cruel hard bitchy witch I am.

 

·         The previous winter I had fancied a spot of skiing.  I booked the first week in March to avoid both the French school holidays and the British half term. Parents complain about how much more expensive it is to take their kids away during the school holidays, but nobody seems to consider that people like me might not want to share their precious leisure time with other people’s sprogs and therefore plan accordingly, only to have those plans scuppered by mummies and daddies breaking the rules and furthermore then refusing to control their little darlings.

 

When I arrived at the chalet I discovered that the guests consisted of me and three married couples on holiday together.  And their nine children.  And a baby.  So that was seven adults and ten kids aged between one and eight.  I was totally outnumbered by the worst behaved, rudest, loudest, most spoilt brats I have ever deliberately wanted to avoid.  The children were even worse.

 

My idea of a perfect day’s skiing is to start off with several cups of tea and a long warm bath.  Then I will have a bit of a sit-down and another cup of tea and maybe a slice of toast and Marmite.  Then if the weather looks nice and sunny, I’ll get togged up and go up the mountain.  By this time it is never earlier than 11am.  Then I will scoot about for a bit until I get hungry, stop and have a bowl of spaghetti with a glass or two of wine, and then scoot about a bit more until I get tired. Then I will clonk back to the chalet with my skis poised jauntily on my shoulder, feeling horribly smug at how much fitter I must be by now, that I haven’t once fallen over, thanking the mountain gods that I haven’t broken any bits off myself, looking forward to taking my boots off, yet another long bath, a drink and above all a couple of hours’ nap before dinner.  (Look, I know there are some Keenies who are up at the crack of dawn, shivering in the queue for the first lift with icicles hanging from their noses, when it’s all freezing cold and hard and icy (these, in my experience, are the folks hogging all the airport wheelchairs at the end of the week) but hey buddy, this is MY holiday.  I will be the first to admit that I’m pretty rubbish at Alpine sports and tend to ski within my own very considerable limitations most days apart from occasional flashes of brilliance, but I love it nevertheless.  I paid good money for this, I am World Class at enjoying myself, and I’m not in the bloody army or training for the Winter Olympics either. OK?)

 

My post-ski nap time always seemed to coincide exactly with the end of the kids’ ski school lessons and as soon as my head hit the pillow they would pile into the wooden floored chalet in their boots like a herd of shouting, arguing elephants.  The parents, not wishing to have their conversations about Islington house prices and school fees interrupted, would just wave them away like flies and tell them to ‘go and play downstairs’.  ‘Downstairs’ being right outside my room of course.

 

·         On the plane home I found myself seated next to a woman and her screaming infant.  (Just call me Baby Magnet.)  I had been up since 4.30am and by the time the delayed plane took off from Geneva it was about midday and I was absolutely bloody starving.  The trolley was making its tortuously slow progress down the aisle and I could smell the food.  I could almost taste it. I was practically weeping with hunger.  I could have chewed my own arm off like a small mammal caught in a wire trap.  The flight attendant finally put a tray in front of me and the woman beside me, without apology, chose that EXACT MOMENT to change her baby’s DIRTY nappy.  Of course, being British, I didn’t say anything but glanced sideways and gave a small, exasperated sigh.  She said “Oh don’t be so miserable.  He’s only a little baby boy!”  “I can see that,” I muttered.  “Well why don’t you go and sit somewhere else then?” she shrilled.  I shall leave that question dangling in the air along with the smell of my delayed breakfast and the baby’s bowels, which remain with me to this day.

 

·         I was on an early train to work in the so-called ‘quiet’ carriage, looking forward to a few minutes’ shuteye.  The train stopped at Guildford to pick up Enormous Chas and Charlene Chav, two baby buggies and their three podgy children.  They spread themselves out and Dad and Mum immersed themselves in their improving reading matter – the back pages of the Star and Heat magazine respectively.  The baby was fast asleep.  The elder of the three kids slumped back in her seat and seemed quite happy drumming her pink Bratz Dolls-encased heels on the seat and poking chips in her mouth.  So far so peaceful.  But the three-year-old wasn’t pleased with this tranquil if somewhat bucolic scene and started playing up.  “MUMMMMMMMMAAY!!!!!” she yelled over and over again.  Mummy was too engrossed in the latest Celebrity Cellulite Scandal to notice, so the kid turned her attention to her father.  “DADDDDDDAYYYYYY!!!!!”  No reaction. “DDDDAAAADDDDAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!” she shrieked.  Daddy eventually looked up and bellowed “SHAAADDDDUPPPPP WILL YOU!!!  JUST. SHUUUTTT. YOUR. FACE.” This little tete-a-tete repeated itself in exactly the same vein for quite some time.

 

Now it is a fair old while since I was the mother of a really small child, but as far as I can recall, when they start kicking off, especially in a public place, the way to deal with it is to provide some sort of distraction.  You can, for instance pick them up and give them a cuddle, sing, read a story, make soothing noises, offer a toy to play with, or something to eat and drink.  (Preferably NOT a packet of Monster Munch and a can of ADHD-inducing, luridly orange-coloured, radioactive fizzy liquid.   I would recommend instead milk and slices of organic apple.)  What you don’t do is look up from your copy of the Daily Prole and bellow at them to shut up.  It never works.  Really.  You must trust me in this.  (Of course if you are at home when the tantrum occurs, you can just roll them up in an old piece of carpet (or a rug) and shove them in the cupboard under the stairs for a couple of hours which gives everybody a chance to calm down.) *

 

Now even my most ardent admirers could never say with a straight face that I am the absolute spit of, say, Julia Roberts, but I do scrub up quite nicely, have curly red hair, big blue eyes, clear skin, rosy cheeks and a cheery winsome smile.  However, when the mood takes me, I don’t look like anything like that. Especially when the hair and the smile are out of view as they were that morning.  At the time, I was wearing my French Lieutenant’s Woman’s coat, which is a sweeping black ankle-length jobby with a black velvet-lined hood.  Because it had been raining and I hadn’t been on the train that long, I still had the hood up.  The smile was absent for obvious reasons.

 

By now my ears were actually starting to hurt so, abandoning all hope of my usual five-minute power nap, I put down my newspaper, leant forward slightly, inclined my head, and fixed the kid with a Very Hard Penetrating Stare.  The effect was immediate and startling.  The colour drained from her furious purple little face, her eyes widened like saucers, her jaw went slack, her mouth fell open, she gave a small frightened whimper and …… fell silent.  For the remainder of the one hour trip.  Result!

 

Looking back, my appearance must have been similar to that of a Dementor – you know, one of those creatures that scare the shit of out Harry Potter.  The kid is probably even now suffering nightmares and post-traumatic stress.  “Oooooh everything went all dark and swirly!  I felt as though all the joy had been sucked out me and I would never be happy again.  Ooooooooooh.”  Or something.  Whatever.

 

Jean-Paul Sartre was a miserable old goat who once said ‘Hell is other people.’  Being a fairly gregarious soul myself, I can’t agree with him there, but if he had said ‘Hell is other people’s out-of-control children and their appalling, feckless  parents’ then he would have been right on the money.

 

Which brings me, Gentle Reader, to my latent talent.  I have been looking for a change of career so I have decided to offer my services as a Child Silencer.  A bit like a sterner version of the Horse Whisperer, but for kids.  Willing to travel on trains, aeroplanes, the rear seat of a car on long tiresome journeys to the West Country, Wales and the Lake District, in broken-down lifts.  Will even share the dreaded ‘family-friendly’ ski chalet (for a supplement).  Indeed, I will consider any confined space from which there is no immediate escape and wherever small children are present.  Fee negotiable and enormous.

 

*  Before I get flamed by doting parents, social services, the NSPCC, anybody with a sense of humour bypass, (or Sotheby’s) – I’m just kidding.  I do not really recommend this method of dealing with unruly children.  Especially if your rugs and carpets are valuable or antique.  Soiling may occur and Shake ‘N Vac doesn’t really do the job.

 

 

Mind the Gap

There used to be a BBC radio announcer called Daphne Oxenford who retired from Listen With Mother in 1971 having presented the programme for 21 years.  She spoke with the cut glass BBC accent of the era with immaculate Received Pronunciation.  No Radio 1 Laddette she.  I often wondered what happened to her.

I can exclusively reveal that she has been dragged out of retirement, locked once again in a recording booth, and now provides the Voice of South West Trains, the dominatrix and torturer of commuters everywhere south of Waterloo.

However something awful has happened to her.  The warmth in her voice, which charmed small children in the 50s, 60s and early 70s, has vanished to be replaced with a shrill, finger-wagging, headmistressy bossiness.  She speaks in an irritating staccato and puts inflexion and emphasis in her sentences in strange places.  She doesn’t seem to know when to shut up either.  Have you forgotten all your BBC training Daphne?

I could be wrong.  Perhaps I am doing Mrs Oxenford a gross libellous injustice.  Maybe it is really Princess Michael of Kent earning a few bob on the side.

Whatever.  Here are a few examples:

You get on the same train you use every morning and she tells you which station it is:  “This. Is (station name)”  (“Really??  I thought this was Istanbul!”)

The train pulls off and Daphne/HRH pipes up:  “Welcome  on BOARD the South West Trains service.  To London.  WATERLOO.  Call. ING at (station name, station name, station name, station name, station name, station name ………) to London.  WATERLOO.

Just before you arrive at the next station, Daphne/HRH tells us:  “The next. STATION is.  (Station name).  PLEASE mind the GEP.  Between the PLETFORM.  And the TRAIN).  Sometimes she adds:  “Please change HERE.  For (station name, station name, station name, station name ………)  Sometimes this information is wrong.

Then, having told us 30 seconds previously at which station we are arriving, just in case we have the attention span of a goldfish, she tells us the name of the station again.  The train pulls out of that station and she starts all over again.

The distance between  SW Train stations into Waterloo is no longer than five minutes in most cases, so you would think that lot would be enough to keep Daphne/HRH occupied and the commuters thoroughly informed, but no.  She also feels duty bound to tell us between each stop that “CCTV camera and video recording.  Is in USE.  On this TRAIN.”  She then reminds us not to leave our stuff lying around unattended like the morons we undoubtedly are:  “DO try to.  Keep ALL personal ITEMS with yew.  If yew SEE anything SUSPICIOUS.  Please tell a member of STAAHFF.”  As far as I can recall the last time anybody was killed or injured on British public transport, the ‘personal items’ responsible were very much attended.

However the absolutely lulu, the one that really gets my goat is as follows:

 

“Yew MUST have a valid ticket before.  Yew get on one of.  OUR. TRAINS.  If yew do NOT.  Show a valid TICKET when yew are ASKED.  Yew MAY.  Have to pay a PENALTY fare.  Thenk yew.”

 

Now tell me please.  What is the point of that?  While you are sitting there, when you hear this announcement, do you think:  “Really? You mean I should have bought a ticket???  Well, fuck me!!  I thought train travel was free!  Blimeys, I must get off right now and buy one.  Oh no!  I can’t!  The train’s moving!”   If that is the case, Gentle Reader, then I’m afraid you should definitely not be allowed outside your front door unaccompanied, let alone try to travel on public transport without your personal carer.  Look, maybe I’m missing something here, but if you are already on the train and you don’t have a valid ticket then it is too bloody late.  And if you do have a valid ticket then the message is totally redundant.  So please Daphne/Your Royal Highness, do us all a favour and SHUT UP.

You can’t even get away from it in the so-called ‘quiet’ carriage, and if you are unfortunate enough to be sitting under the PA system you had better already be deaf because the decibel level is so high that Daphne/HRH threatens to burst your ear drums.

SW Trains have been asked why there have to be quite so many announcements given that there are on board electronic signs constantly in operation and their reply was that some people have learning difficulties and can’t read.  In other words, they inflict this racket on us for the benefit of less than 1% of their customers.  This 1% could ask the guard for help surely if they are travelling alone?

Once, just once, Daphne/HRH piped up with something useful.  I boarded the train home, knackered as usual, and after she had welcomed me on board, told me where I was, where I was going, all the stops along the way, had reminded me to look after my stuff etc for the first of umpteen times, to my astonishment she said:  “We are pleased to ANNOUNCE.  That there is a REFRESHMENT service.  On this TRAIN.  Serving tea, coffee.  SNECKS, sendwiches, het end keld DRINKS.  Beer, WAINS and spirits.”

“Great.”  I thought, “That makes a change.  I could just do with a naice gless of wain.  Cheers Daph.”  Unfortunately she then blew it by saying sternly:  “Please make sure yew keep the AISLES.  Free of any luggage.  So the TROLLEY ken pass without HINDRANCE through the TRAIN.”

“Christ!”  I thought crossly.  “I’ve paid eleventy-seven quid for the privilege of getting to and from work and I just get told off all the bloody time!  Just shut up will you woman!”

Listen Daphne/Your Royal Highness, I DO have all my marbles, I DON’T have special needs, I CAN read, I DO know where I got on the train, I DO know where I’m going, I KNOW the names of ALL the stations in between, I DO have a valid ticket, I DO know that CCTV is watching my every move, I WILL mind the gap, my personal items are RIGHT here beside me thank you.  And I am sure that if anybody should see ANYTHING suspicious, such as a wild-eyed woman in a pink cashmere coat smashing up the public address system with the heaviest of her ‘personal items’, they WILL tell a member of staff.  Who will no doubt gently lead her gibbering off the train to the safety of a padded cell.

In the meantime, please bear in mind that I have been awake since 5am.  When I eventually get to work I will have to earn eight hours’ wages.  Then I will have to get home again.  Right now I would like to concentrate on my Sudoku puzzle.  I would like to finish the crossword.  I might like to start my new book and not have to read the first paragraph over and over again because YOU keep interrupting my train of thought.  Then I would like to have a five-minute power nap.

So could you PLEASE.  JUST.  SHUT. THE.  FUCK. UP.  Thenk yew.