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...'!
No comments:
Post a Comment