Both of us had to be back to work in the afternoon, so we were taking a morning flight back. The beauty of the morning was shattered early by a small child who had discovered the game of Press The Elevator Button And Scream In Delight When It Arrives.

The child was quite small, and of an age when it would be an impressive thing indeed to see the elevator arrive, but what annoyed us was that it was not by itself. Mother and father were out there in the corridor as well, allowing the child to scream and run around, calling the elevator and generally be annoying to other guests. When we’d checked in, we’d found there were whole floors devoted to non-smoking rooms. We think it would be a good idea to install child-free floors as well. Is anyone out there in the hospitality trade listening to this? Or at least give us the right to bludgeon the stuffing out of parents stupid enough to let their child scream outside hotel rooms early in the morning when there is a whole city outside to run around in…

After a quick breakfast, we walked down to the bus stop in order to catch the 10:15am express to the airport to catch our 11:00am flight. We arrived at 10:05am, and patiently waited.

• 10:15am - no bus.
• 10:20am - still no bus
• 10:25am - still no bus, starting to get a little worried now
• 10:28am - should we take a taxi?
• 10:31am - bus arrives
• 10:51am - arrive at airport
• 10:52am - discover every check-in line is eight people deep
• 10:54am - manage to locate a supervisor who sends us straight to the plane
• 10:55am - reach gate of flight, notice ‘final call’ sign flashing
• 10:56am - checked-in, plenty of time, who was worried?
• 10:58am - seated on plane
• 11:01am - plane departs terminal
• 11:05am - safety demonstration as we taxi to runway
• 11:12am - sitting on tarmac waiting for take-off
• 11:16am - leave ground
• 11:17am - kid sitting in seat behind us starts to be a pain in the neck

Yes, we’d managed to be blessed with yet another darling brat who was evidently the apple of her mother’s eye, and a thorn in the side to all others. Initially the child restricted itself to jumping on the seat and holding the seat in front, often grabbing chunks of Di’s hair as it did so. A few dirty looks managed to get the mother to prevent that little trick, but it found another one.

Have you ever noticed how the tray on the back of the seat in front of you makes a funny noise when you unclip it and let it drop? See how the seat in front of you gets a jolt. What a fun game! What could be more fun than that? Why, slamming the tray back into the upright position, of course. Whee. There’s a game that can amuse for hours! More dirty looks to the parents, and that stopped after another 10 minutes or so.

Finally, the child tired of being captive in it’s seat for so long, and longed to be free. Allowing the child to run off a bit of steam, the parents let it run up and down the length of the plane aisle as that was the only major physical activity it could achieve within the plane. Nobody particularly minded the running back and forth, but everybody minded the fact it ran screaming down the aisle from the back to the front, stopped and laughed and yelled out over 30 rows of people to it’s parents to “LOOK! LOOK!” then ran back, screaming at the top of it’s lungs the whole way.

As it ran, every face in the plane turned to watch it, to find out who the parents with pathetic control over their child were, so it was not just us that were inconvenienced. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the cabin crew offered the parents a colouring book as incentive for the child to sit down. Unfortunately, we were on the descent into Melbourne by that time, and so five or six minutes after it got the book, and peace was in the cabin once more, it was time to put the tray back to the upright position.

This naturally was teasing the kid and it began to scream in protest when the marvellous colouring book and pencils were being taken away just after it got them. To be fair, we could understand the last protest screams - it would be seen as pretty mean treatment by the kid to have such a wonderful thing taken away so soon after it got it. As a result, we were not concerned that the parents put the tray back down again and allowed the child to colour all the way to the ground, ignoring the ruling about trays being upright during landing. We were just hoping there’d be some sort of turbulence that flipped the tray up and knocked the kid out in some sort of cosmic karma, but alas, that did not happen.

So, the SPOTD award had to be shared for this day to both sets of parents that seemed unable to look after their children. It has been a long-standing sentiment of ours that if you are going to breed, you should look after that which you have bred. A smack is not a bad thing. Neither is a sedative. In you don’t have it in you to do either, then please allow volunteers from the audience to offer their services in these matters.

By the way, some people feel we are being too harsh on such a small child and that it was not it’s fault, because all small children are like that. Firstly, they are not all like that. There were four other kids on the plane, only two rows from where the brat was, and not one of them made a noise, got out of their seat, whined or was a pain during the entire flight. The parents were attentive, and made sure their kids were well-behaved, and were highly regarded by us. Secondly, we are giving the SPOTD to the parents, not the children.

In somewhat more positive news about the flight back, there was no cloud cover, and we were able to see the snowfields, Eildon weir, towns, farms, and other distinctive landmarks which was very interesting. Usually there is nothing to see but clouds, which makes for a boring trip, so it was quite scenic as flights go, if a little noisy.

We arrived back in Melbourne at 12:20pm, right on time, despite being 16 minutes late leaving, and caught a taxi back home, dumped our gear and went straight back out the door to our various workplaces. Bother. Work is such a drag…

Categories: Travel, Sydney 2000