Survival is the operative word as that is the instinct you need to endure a holiday in Egypt.
This may conjure up images of historical sites being in awe of ancient architecture and fat bellied tourists, but you can google those images so this holiday was about relaxation. Silly of me to forget then that I can’t relax around other members of the human race. I usually book private villas on holiday but due to a harsh Winter and need for sun I needed to book something without much thought involved, remind me never to do so again.
It wasn’t all bad, I got to partake in one of my favourite pastimes, namely observing and criticising people. Fortunately a charter flight for a package holiday gives you countless opportunity.
Boarding the plane and realising there are no entertainment facilities I scanned the plane selecting who would be the focus of my attention for the next 5 hours. It didn’t take long as I found myself seated next to a gay couple. How did they know to seat us together at the back of the plane? I imagined this is how Rosa Parks felt if she were a middle class white homosexual male.
I may have mentioned I am a sorry excuse for a homosexual, often derided by my own kind for not being gay enough. This couple were following the gay rule book to a tee. No sooner had we sat down then they were served a bottle of champagne and luxury chocolates. ”Are you celebrating something?” I asked. They looked at me quizically, “No, just our holidays” Such extravagance, I can’t begin to consider such fabulousness as to order champagne on a shit charter flight as I lined up my travel sized Vodkas. As I pulled out my reading material for the journey, one of many books I would take with me, they produced a copy of Hello and Heat magazine, cooing at pictures of celebrity cellulite.
Losing interest in their predictability I glanced over at an elderly lady who caught my attention as she was playing a Nintendo DS, I made a mental note of her elderly attire and then was more intrigued as she then pulled out her tablet and started punching away frantically. Later she pulled out her top of the range mobile phone and I was in awe of her technical savvy so far ahead of myself. It was only after she pulled out a pack of pastilles from her purse, in a flip top box, just like your gran would have, I imagined them covered in bits of pocket fluff and my faith in her years was restored. She could try to keep up with the latest trends but she still carried a pack of pastilles in her purse.
I then spied my nemesis, someone who truly made my blood boil for their own self importance, her name was THE MOTHER.
She wasn’t any normal mother, she was THE MOTHER, she is more important than anyone else who had expelled children from within her. There was no time to sit and relax in the flight, she had to control everything, the world would stop turning of course if she rested on her laurels. To hell with the stewardesses trying to serve people from their carts, THE MOTHER had work to do so they coud damn well wait for her to be finished before passing by her. She was never finished.
It wasn’t just her babies who needed constant attention, her husband and her own mother who couldn’t function without her as she stuffed clothes behind her husbands head so he could rest better, as she tucked blankets around her mother. She would leave the overhead lockers open permanently as she had to unpack everything and repack numerous times throughout the flight. Baby couldn’t be left to sleep, I swear she would provoke it so she could pick it up and carry it up and down the aisles the hole flight just so we all knew what an important job she had.
There was no rest for THE MOTHER, people had to be force-fed her breadsticks whether they wanted them or not, they had to acknowledge her presence. It was made worse by her sister, also a MOTHER also carrying her baby up and down the plane, as soon as one did so, the other seeing a threat to her position did likewise, strapping the baby in a scarf round their necks and lugging the blobs down the aisles as the were woken from their slumber so we could all witness what a job it was to get them relaxed again.
This never ceased the hole flight, so we all took longer to be served since they were blocking the aisles the whole time. I really don’t like waiting for my next drink I thought as I cast daggers in THE MOTHER’S direction.
