The greatest myth of all time is that having children will make holiday more fun.
Yes, playing Uno with your children sitting round a rickety table, under a palm tree with an ice cold gin and tonic by the sea as the sun sets on a day filled with laughter and fun is as close to heaven as anyone could imagine. But it is also as rare as a cuddly whippet.
The reality of holidays involves a lot less glamour and a lot more rain, tears, fights, disappointment and excess baggage but the worst part of all holidays is always the flight. The dreaded f’ing flight, and there is always two of them!
We all have friends who are incapable of telling the truth about their own children, which is quite understandable as none of us like to admit to murderous thoughts. But almost no one I know can even start to pretend they enjoy flying with children, its unanimous amongst all parents – flying is superbly sh1t. But as necessary evils go this one is right up there with a dose of the clap in your twenties.
For anyone that knows me (which is all of you last time I checked my subscriber list) you will know that I don’t like to go far from an iPad when I am looking after my boys. These wonderful devices are like carrying a mini Nanny round with you in your bag and allow Lexi and I to enjoy long lunches without interruption. Yes I know some of you punish yourselves by not allowing “Screen time” as if watching a Pixar movie is the gateway to drug abuse but you are clearly better parents than we are, and we love long lunches so they work for us.
But never do I love screen time more than on a long haul flight, Archie and Jack love holiday a lot but really they love the flight the most. They love nothing more than 8-9 hours of staring mind numbingly at a screen watching idiotic repetitive programmes and films. They have trained themselves like mini ninjas to be able to stay awake throughout the night so long as they are watching some drivel on a poor quality airline screen. My father will find this depressing (If he reads this far with out being appalled at all the grammatical errors I have made…) but for me this makes long haul flights bearable.
Now that we have the mastered the process as a family of four, 3 seats for the boys, 1 seat for Lexi on the other side of the aisle. The boys take up their position either side of me and get plugged straight in to the stupid double stereo adapter thing (Why do they still do this, do people really steal headphones nowadays?) and away we go. The other day we were all plugged in ready to go before a single other passenger had boarded. Someone even remarked as we left the plane how quiet they had been, little did they know all three boys brains had been completely liquified by the screens.
The best bit is the tantrum afterwards, normally during bag collection one of the children will decide that he hates one or all of us so much the only sensible solution is to run away with the creepy looking man from seat 32D, when captured the ensuing screams and limb flailing inevitably leads to Lexi getting clobbered in the face by an errant shoe which in turn leads to more screaming and results in a full blown family punch up.
I think I am right in saying we aren’t alone in this elegantly executed travel style, I have even seen other families having the same fights at the bag carousel. What I can’t work out is what the hell are the weirdos doing who don’t fight…do they read books???
Safer not to comment really.
You have showed remarkable restraint
Love it…
Thanks mate! See you later.
Can we have some nice long lunches in May?😁
Only long lunches!
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂