The one where we nearly crashed the plane - a Sennett Holiday Disaster story

As I sit on the plane to Tenerife, having recently listened to the safety announcements, I find myself reminded of an incident that happened a couple of years ago...

We were on our epic tour of Australia and Hong Kong, involving four international flights, six domestic flights and an awful lot of driving. We soon found that the internal flights were a whole lot less stressful than the international ones - later check-in time, fewer restrictions, shorter queues, and so on. Several airports even had these handy machines where you could print out your own luggage tags to attach to your cases (you know what it's like trying to reattach those sticky tags around a loaf of bread? Yeah, that) before placing them on a conveyor belt and waving them goodbye - so much quicker than queuing up at a check-in desk. We were at one such airport (can't remember where - maybe I've blocked it out) doing exactly that. We put our jackets in the front pockets of our cases (which suggests it was Melbourne, as we were obviously flying somewhere warmer), attached the tags with some difficulty, watched them disappear on the conveyor belt then headed towards security. 

Sadly, even for domestic flights, you have to go through the whole security rigmarole. Luckily there were no restrictions on liquids, but we still had to pop everything through the X-ray machine and put phones, tablets, etc. through separately. This was the point at which Lee realised he'd lost his phone. We searched his hand luggage. We searched my hand luggage. We searched both the boys' hand luggage. We went through our movements - where could he have left it? Then he realised exactly where he'd left it - in his jacket pocket. The same jacket we'd just waved goodbye to along with our cases. 

Relieved we knew where it was, we made our way through security and headed for the departure lounge. Then it hit us - the phone was still turned on, and it was NOT in flight mode. 'Do you think it really matters?' we asked ourselves. 'No, probably not,' we answered, trying to convince ourselves. 'Why don't you Google it?' I suggested. 'Why don't you?' replied Lee, 'as you're the only one with a phone.' Fair point. So I Googled it. And it didn't make for reassuring reading. The signals transmitted by phones can potentially interfere with the flight controls or something. There are a number of plane crashes that have been possibly put down to mobile phone use. Basically, it would probably be fine but it might not. Was that a risk we wanted to take?

Obviously the answer was 'of course not'. But the next question was 'what the hell do we do about it?' The phone was in the suitcase, and the suitcase was possibly even on the plane by now. How much hassle would we cause by trying to get the phone back? How much of a delay would we cause? How pissed off would people be at us? Probably not as pissed off as they would be if we crashed the plane, we figured. So off we went to the information desk. 

'Excuse me,' we said, somewhat tentatively, 'but we accidentally left a phone switched on in our suitcase.' We expected her to tell us not to worry, that phones causing crashes was just an urban myth designed to make us pay full attention to the safety briefing. Instead, she looked horrified. 'Right, okay, that's got to come off,' she said. She asked for the flight details and the colour of the case ('pink' replied Lee, rather sheepishly) and then got on the phone to someone in baggage. The good news was the cases hadn't been loaded yet. The bad news was Lee had to go back through security to locate the case and remove the offending phone. 

So off Lee went to retrieve the phone while the boys and I went through to departures, sat down and waited. And waited. And waited. After a while, I started to worry. Where was he? It's not like I could phone him to find out. It wasn't long till the plane was supposed to leave, and the screen showed we were due to board at any moment. The enormity of it hit me - I was on the other side of the world on my own with two boys and no way of contacting my husband. If everyone started boarding, what should we do? Get on the plane and hope Lee joined us before we took off? Wait in the departure lounge for him regardless? Get on and fly to the next destination without him because buying one new plane ticket was cheaper than four?! The time was moving on. We should have been boarding by now. 

Then there was an announcement. 'We're sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen. This is due...' - I hung my head in shame and waited for the bit about the idiotic passenger who left his phone in his case - '...to the late arrival of the plane. We'll commence boarding in five minutes.' I lifted my head up in relief, glad to see our error wasn't being broadcast across the departure lounge, just in time to see Lee walk through security. 

It was all fine. We made it on the plane in time. We didn't cause a catastrophic crash. Lee's case even made it on the plane. I'm thankful the plane was late in arriving in the first place, or there's a pretty good chance Lee's case may have already been loaded by the time we'd realised the problem - and that really would have made things difficult. The moral to this story, of course, is take very careful notice of your phone at all times when at the airport. And try very hard not to think about the potential consequences of all the other people who don't think airplane mode is that important...

The one where we didn't have a change of clothes (a Sennett Holiday Disaster story)

A couple of friends have pointed out there are relatively few disaster stories in my blog. And when I say relative, I mean in comparison to the amount of disasters we actually have. It's a fair point. I've written reviews, I've written tips, I've written general musings, but apart from a few examples (Those without a strong stomach, look away now; The phone, the kayak and me; The time when The List didn't work; Sick of holidays?) I've not covered a fraction of the holiday disasters that we actually have. And we have many. To be clear - and without wanting to jinx myself - I'm not talking major disasters here. We haven't been caught up in a hurricane, our passports haven't been stolen, none of us has ended up in hospital (and it's really difficult to type with your fingers crossed). But we are somewhat renowned for having lots of mini, sort-of-funny-when-you-look-back-on-it disasters, to the point that when anything goes wrong on my friends' holidays, they tag me on Facebook and refer to it as a Sennett Holiday. So I thought maybe it was time to go back over a few such incidents...

It was August 2010. My eldest was four and my youngest still a baby. We were off to Spain for a fortnight in the sun. We had a hideously early flight the next morning so, as we often do, we'd checked into an airport hotel the night before. Now Thomson had recently started a new initiative where you could check in for your flight the night before - and I don't mean just an online check-in, where you get to choose your seats; you could physically check your luggage in at the airport. This seemed a great idea to us. How many times had we been stuck in the longest queue ever to check in our luggage, worrying about whether we'd have enough time to then get past security and catch our plane? It's pretty standard these days to check in online at home, but you still have to join a queue at the airport to get rid of your luggage. This was genius - we could check everything in the night before, knowing that in the morning, when our alarm went off at the ungodly hour of 4am, all we had to do was drag ourselves out of bed and straight to security. No extra queues, no suitcases to carry, no brainer. I used The List to ensure everything we'd need for overnight and the journey - toothbrushes, change of underwear, books, nappies, etc. - went into the hand luggage and everything else went into our suitcases ready to be checked in. So that's what we did. We checked into our hotel, walked across to the airport, checked in our cases and then went to find somewhere for dinner, baggage-free and boarding cards ready for the next day.

After dinner, while walking back through the airport to our hotel, it happened. 'I need a poo!' announced our four-year-old. 'Okay,' we said calmly, 'can you wait until we get to the hotel?' He shook his head. 'Okay,' we said, still calmly, 'we'll go and find some toilets.' 'I need a poo NOW!' he wailed, a look of terror on his face. Now realising the urgency, we had similar looks of terror on our faces as we ran aimlessly around the airport looking for a toilet sign. And as we found one, and I grabbed my son's hand and ran towards it, I turned to look at my husband and saw from his face that we were already too late.

I led my son into the toilets, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Once safely locked in a cubicle, I surveyed the damage. It was carnage. I stripped him off and used baby wipes to clean him up, thankful that we'd have a hotel bathroom to wash him properly in afterwards. I rinsed his jeans as thoroughly as I could in the sink, apologising to the lady who came in to clean and then thought better of it, and then tied them tightly in a nappy sack, wishing we didn't have to take them on holiday with us but refusing to throw away a perfectly good (if somewhat soiled) pair of jeans. I was less precious with his socks and pants, which went straight into the nappy bin in the toilet. 'But those were my favourite Buzz Lightyear pants!' he wailed. I'm sorry, but Buzz Lightyear was well past saving.

So there I was, stuck on my own in a toilet with a naked-from-the-waist-down four-year-old and a rather unpleasant nappy sack. I phoned my husband. 'Can you get him a change of clothes please?' There was silence, and it didn't take me long to realise why. We didn't have a change of clothes. All our clothes were in the suitcases. The ones we'd checked in just an hour or so earlier. We hadn't even packed pyjamas, as it was only for one night. 'Can you buy him a change of clothes, please?' I asked. And so I waited nervously in the toilet cubicle, trying to ignore the whimpers from my son and the conversation about the 'awful smell' between two women who'd just walked in. Finally I received a text. 'Everywhere's shut'.

What could I do? I could hardly walk through the airport with my son's backside (and frontside) on display for all to see. Suddenly I had a brainwave. I phoned my husband. 'Is Boots open?' I asked. 'If so, buy some pull-ups!' Five minutes later: 'Boots is open. No pull-ups.'

We had only one option left. Some minutes later, I emerged from the toilets with a four-year-old in trainers, a T-shirt and a nappy. And I don't mean a toddler-sized nappy - I mean a little nappy borrowed (well, okay, stolen) from his baby brother. It didn't fit. It looked wrong in every way. And have you ever tried putting a traditional, non-pull-up nappy on a child that's way too big to lie on a changing table? But at least it (just about) covered his dignity. We put him in the pushchair and carried his brother, hoping it would look slightly less weird. But as we walked through the airport, the enormity of it hit me - he wasn't just travelling through the airport and back to bed in the hotel wearing a nappy. He would also be queuing up and going through security in a nappy - if no shops were open in the evening, they sure as hell wouldn't be open at 4 in the morning. And if we didn't have time to find something in the departure lounge (where the shops surely would be open), he'd be potentially getting on the plane, going on a coach and arriving at the hotel wearing a nappy. He may only have been four, but he was old enough not to be happy about this situation - not to mention the fact that he was still inconsolable about the Buzz Lightyear pants.

Suddenly, as we neared the exit, salvation dawned. 'Monsoon!' I shrieked. 'And it's open!' I should point out at this point that I'm a Primark girl, and anything more than £7 or £8 for kids' clothes makes me cry. '£17?' cried my husband, in horror, as he picked up the only pair of shorts in the shop that would fit my son. 'You've got to be kidding!' I might add that this was six years ago, and £17 was even more then than it is now. But right at that moment, I would probably have paid £70. I grabbed them in delight, handed over my money and was soon back in the toilets making my son look decent again. To say I was relieved would be an understatement.

I should probably note that my son was long past the potty-training stage and was not in the habit of having accidents of either type - he clearly had a bug of some sort and was just unlucky. But still - you'd think we'd have been a bit more prepared and had at least one change of clothes for the kids, just for all eventualities. You'd also think we'd have learnt our lesson from this, and always carry spares with us, but we still didn't (and have been caught out since, if not quite as dramatically). We did, however, learn just how important your child's favourite Buzz Lightyear pants are - my son took most of the holiday to get over their loss. I too, was slightly traumatised for a while, if for different reasons. I at least now know to run the minute I hear 'I need a...'!