Nightmare neighbours

Your average short-haul plane isn't exactly designed for a family of four, with three seats either side of the aisle. Over the years, we've experimented with a variety of combinations (the kids once sat on their own in front of us during an internal flight in Australia - bliss!) but we have pretty much settled on one configuration now: window, boy 1, boy 2, me/Lee, aisle, Lee/me, stranger, another stranger, window. To make it fair, we alternate - if I sit next to the boys on the way out, Lee sits next to them on the way back, or vice versa. We always viewed sitting next to the boys as the 'short straw' - much as I love them, they don't make the best travelling companions. Past journeys have been spent listening to constant questions, trying to stop them bickering, finding things they've lost/dropped, getting up and down to take them to the toilet, trying to stop the drinks spilling all over their trays and holding a sick bag primed and ready. To be fair, they're much better now they're older, but you still don't exactly get to sit back and relax uninterrupted with a book when you're sitting next to children. Sitting across the aisle, however, is a different story - you can read, watch something, listen to music or even go to sleep, with no one to interrupt or disturb you. This, at least, is the theory - and it seems to be the practice with Lee. For me, on the other hand, not so much - I seem to draw the short straw whoever I'm sitting next to. 

Our recent holiday to Spain is a case in point. On the way out, I sat next to the kids and Lee got the strangers. To be fair, the kids were pretty good, but they didn't exactly make for a relaxing journey. Lee sat next to a gay couple who spent the journey bitching about all the other passengers - not only was he undisturbed for the journey but he also had entertainment if he felt like earwigging. On the journey back, Lee got the kids and I got a man who took up more than just his own seat. Now I have personal space issues at the best of times, and I don't feel comfortable about physical contact with a stranger, especially a male stranger. Well, there was no avoiding it on that flight - my left leg was pressed up against him the whole time, there was no possibility of using the arm rest and I spent the journey leaning at an improbable angle towards the aisle, giving myself backache in the process. To top it off, the bloke behind me had unusually long legs, which he stretched out in the aisle next to me, and the bloke in front kept sitting back really heavily, making the back of the seat repeatedly bang against my legs. I felt trapped from all directions and would have gladly traded places with Lee to sit next to the children. 

The journey got me thinking about all the other passengers I've had the misfortune to sit next to, in front of or behind. While Lee usually sits next to a nice elderly couple, or businessmen concentrating on their laptops, I always get the weirdos or the difficult ones. They include:

• The couple who didn't get up once on a 12-hour flight to Singapore. To be fair, they weren't annoying, but I was worried for their health. What about DVTs? What about going to the toilet?!

• The girl who refused all aeroplane food on a long-haul flight, eating nothing but grapes she'd brought with her, whose leg did not stop twitching up and down for the last hour, and who thought nothing of hitting me in the face when she took off her jacket, as well as spreading her belongings out on her lap and some of mine. 

• The people who insist on reclining the chair in front of me, even during daytime, short-haul flights, and who don't even have the decency to put it back up when it's time to eat. If I had a bullet point for every time this had happened, it would take up the screen ten times over. (See Too close for comfort for more on this.)

• The man who fell asleep, snored loudly and whose head kept drifting worryingly towards my shoulder. 

• The cute toddler in the seats in front who spent the entire journey playing peekaboo with me over the back of the chair, making me feel guilty if I looked away for more than five seconds. 

• The not-so-cute toddler in the seats behind, who spent the entire journey kicking the back of my chair, who insisted on playing peekaboo by poking her head right through the hole between the chairs so that her face was approximately ten centimetres from mine at all times, and who thought pulling my hair was a great way to get my attention. 

• The parents of said toddlers, who thought they'd make their own lives easier by leaving it to me to entertain their children throughout the flight. 

• The arm-rest-hoggers - again, too many to mention. 

• The lady next to me who got up for the toilet repeatedly, meaning I was forever getting up and down and eventually gave up on anything that involved using my tray, including eating. 

• The man behind me who spent the whole flight getting up and down and felt the need to lean heavily on the back of my chair every time he stood up or sat down. 

• My personal 'favourite', the two over-excited pre-teen girls whose parents in their wisdom had allowed them to sit together, who were louder than my boys on a bad day, who decided to climb over me to go to the toilet instead of waiting for me to move, who fought each other physically so that my chair was constantly moving and I got kicked twice, who had no idea of personal space and thought it was okay to put their bags on the floor in front of my feet and their iPad half on my chair, and who eventually fell asleep ON me. 

So in the future I've decided that we will no longer alternate. Lee can have the strangers and I'll stick with the kids. Much as they can drive me mad sometimes, they're infinitely better than the annoying, seat-reclining, leg-twitching, personal-space-hogging nightmares I usually end up with - better the devil you know, and all that. Plus in a few years' time, when the kids are uncommunicative teenagers who only look up from their phones to grunt at the food and drink, I'll have the quietest, most undisturbed journeys ever. I'll finally have drawn the long straw, and I won't be swapping for anyone!