Sometimes I imagine our five month old daughter is like
Stewey from “Family Guy”, sitting there thinking conspiratorially thoughts
about her parents while smiling angelically to the outside world. I’m sure some
of these thoughts must have been going through her head when we arrived at
Melbourne international airport on a Saturday morning some weeks ago.
Ordinarily she’d be looking at a 45 minute snooze and maybe a trip to the zoo.
Instead, we carried her onto an Airbus A380 (I’m a plane geek so I had to sneak
that in) and took her off to Singapore.
The time zone probably didn’t bother her too much at this
stage. It’s only two hours difference to Australia and she seemed to take it
into her stride. She wasn’t too crazy about the temperature but thankfully
Singapore seems to be based on the Truman Show and if they haven’t built a big Perspex
screen over the whole island to keep the air conditioning in then I’m sure they
have it in their plans.
We then flew to Paris where she slept for eight hours
straight on her first day there and then slipped comfortably into European
life. We took her to all the top Parisian sites for which she showed distain
bordering on contempt. Youth isn’t the only thing wasted on the young. Culture
and scenery come a close second.
After a week of meandering across the world, we ended up in
Ireland. She coped well with the three flights that this involved, crying
occasionally but generally showing so much curiosity that I think she would
have flown the plane if we had let her. I did have to walk her up and down the
aircraft a lot, particularly on the longer legs. This gave me the opportunity
to observe the movie or TV selections of the other passengers (mainly out of
envy I should point out as travelling with a baby precludes video entertainment
if only because they take pleasure in ripping the headphones off your head at
the first opportunity).
My observations showed that “Bourne Identity” type action
movies are popular and that more adults watch cartoons than would care to admit
it. The extensive European Movie menu on offer was meagrely savoured.
Traveling back to Australia was a different kettle of fish.
We made the decision to make a dash back to Melbourne, in so far as you can do
this while taking three flights and travelling 17,000km. Our only break to this
plan was to take a six hour stopover in Singapore. We booked into a “day” hotel
which offered clean sheets and a chance to sleep for a couple of hours. There
are many other hotels in Asia that specialise in renting rooms by the hour, but
ours was a civilised affair and didn’t carry the risk of discovering that the
person you shared a short term bed with was actually the same sex as yourself.
The toughest of the six legs of our odyssey was undoubtedly
the last. Most people on the flight from Singapore to Melbourne thought it was
a red eye, leaving Singapore late at night and delivering its cargo, blearing
eyed, into a Melbourne dawn. Our daughter was still on European time and
considered the flight a mid-afternoon jaunt, during which she expected to be entertained
while practicing her new rolling skills. She only got contrary when we needed
to hook her into the ridiculous seat belt attachments that they gave you on
airplanes. Trying to keep a wriggling baby with no concept of danger inside one
of these things is like trying to herd cats. I hate to break it to the civil
aviation authorities in Singapore, France, Ireland, UK and Australia but our
baby wasn’t belted up while landing in your countries and to be honest, her
nervous father who was fussing with her during most landings, wasn’t hooked up
most of the time either.
We arrived back in Australia pretty frazzled. As a European
with our open borders, it is often confronting to come back to Melbourne and
realise that this is a large island, protective of its food industry. If you
were to judge by the signs in Melbourne’s arrivals hall you would think that it
was a capital offence to smuggle an apple into the country while they would
turn a blind eye to the fact that you have half a kilo of heroin hidden a
place that only you and a doctor checking you for prostate cancer should look.
“Border Security” is a popular Australian program shown all
over the world. I think it is fair to sat that the purpose of the show is to
scare people rather than entertain, unless you find the idea of Chinese people
who can’t speak English trying to explain why they have a live python in their
luggage funny.
We were carrying two packets of tea in our luggage as my
wife has become addicted to Irish brands of this elixir. We pondered whether we
should tick the box on the arrival form to say we were carrying a food product into
the country and put up with the endless questioning that this would result in.
In the end we decided to risk staying quiet, despite the
panic that “Border Security” induces. Perhaps they took pity on us because of
the goggle eyed baby in our front pack, or maybe we just look honest. We sailed
through and are now smug smugglers. We can rest easy, if only our daughter
realised that she’s now back in the Southern Hemisphere. Sleep well tonight
darling, so we all can.
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