The Journey

You used to enjoy travelling to your holiday destination – as far as you were concerned, your holiday started as soon as you’d slung the suitcase in the back of the taxi. But this time round something’s changed and suddenly you find yourself reminded of your experience of childbirth: the endless waiting around, the expressionless professionals, the dry mouth and the queasy stomach. The constant interruptions just as you are about to relax; the temperature checks and monitor bleeps replaced with tinny-voiced announcements and requests for the loo/a biscuit/yet another visit to the duty-free shop.

Inside the aircraft the parallels continue: you have that headachy feeling from being awake all night in brightly-lit rooms. You have to hand it to Easyjet – what they don’t charge you in seat cost they certainly recoup by keeping you awake all night so they can flog you stuff from their on-board shopping carts. The delays, just like in the maternity ward, are experienced in an information vacuum. You’re too hot, dehydrated, weary from gulping in recycled air, disorientated from the lack of sleep and the irregular mealtimes.

That roller-coaster feeling is also there: you can’t get off, someone else is in charge, your fate is in the hands of others, you feel out of control. The jargon, the uniforms, the machinery all convince you that this is a subject you just don’t understand: you could no more deliver your baby on your own than take over from the pilot should he have the temerity to keel over mid-flight. And then, at last, you’re ejected from the plane and step onto fizzing Greek tarmac. You start to feel rejuvenated as you breathe in the sweet scent of aircraft fuel and hot rubber. Holidays, here we come!

And then you remember the kids.