To hell and back

Once I had finally sorted out the plane ticket (they wouldn't give me a cot bed seat until Krusty called every hour to insist, long story...) I was actually quite excited about taking Bambino to Europe, not least because the cold plane would mean I could finally dress my baby in shoes and a cardigan.

I admit that it was quite difficult to say goodbye to Krusty not knowing when we would see him next, but I felt confident that everything would go well. Night flight? Check. Warm, comfy clothes? Check. Soft cover used at naptime to induce sleep? Check.

But I should have known better. In fact, as soon as the wheels of the pushchair got trapped in the door of the Airport Express train, inducing panic in all those around me, I should have seen the signs of a nightmare trip ahead.

It's safe to say, in retrospect, that Oscar does NOT like flying. As soon as we sat down in the plane, he cried for three hours then again every two. The incredibly manicured man next to me (my gaydar was on full alert) started huffing as soon as he sat down, giving Oscar the evils while he edited back copies of the Portugese version of Hello magazine.

In fact the airline had put me in a window seat, so I kept having to step over him to get out (he wouldn't swap with me because he had "specifically ordered a corridor seat"), so after a while, he just draped his cover over his head, periodically huffing from underneath it like some modern, bitchy Egyptian mummy. He paid for his huffinness in the end when the cot bed fell in his lap, breaking both of our tvs...

Many more hellish things happened on the flight, not to mention the endless train journeys from Paris to La Rochelle, with crying all the way, but this trip was a little like childbirth - I remember that it was painful, but I can't remember the pain, because the end result is so pleasurable (oh the baguette, oh the clean, fresh air, oh the proud feeling of seeing my son smile at my parents) that the ordeal has disappeared in my mind.