The In Flight Creche - a photo on Flickriver

            “Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear, one step, two step, tickle you under there!”  Your turn!

This wasn’t quite how I’d imagined the four hour flight to Gran Canaria would start.  We hadn’t even moved yet, as the cabin crew went about their final safety checks.  Ali sat in her usual position by the window - which always infuriates me as she doesn’t even look out of it when we’re flying - and I was stuck in the middle seat next to the complete stranger.  I’m sure some couples take turns at this, but I am never, and I mean never ever, permitted to take the prized window seat.  I’m always the one who’s forced to sit next to whomever fate has thrown upon me.  In this case two whomevers, little Alice sitting on her mother’s knee.  Across from her sat Mollie, the three year old grand duchess of the in flight creche, which also consisted of two more nappy wearing eighteen month old klaxons in the row immediately behind us.  Four hours in the close company of four very small children?  This was going to be a long flight.

As we trundled towards the runway, Mollie burst into tears.  She’d been promised five sweets, but had only been given two so far, and her mother had just told her the rest wouldn’t be forthcoming until after dinner.  Alice just screamed into my right ear because that’s what eighteen month old children do.  Directly behind me, the left hand klaxon vented forth too, directly through the gap between the seats and into my left ear.  Wailing in stereo.  Four hours!  Four hours of this!  I tried to think about the time when it might all be over.  Would it ever be over?

An announcement came over the tannoy.  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, you may have noticed that the plane isn’t full today and there are some empty seats around.  You may move during flight, but please do return to your original seats for landing.”  Ali’s neck immediately went owlwise in a three hundred and sixty degree pivot and spotted three or four rows at the back of the plane that were completely unoccupied.  As the seat belt signs went off, I adopted the diplomatic approach, telling the young mother that we were going to move and that would mean her entire family would be able to sit together.  The young father in the aisle seat in front of us, sitting peacefully and trying to pretend that he wasn’t a part of all this, very possibly winced at the news that he was about to be reunited with his wife and children but I couldn’t see his face.  She apologised, although I replied that it was fine and we’d all been there before.  When I say I’d been there before, definitely not on a four hour flight.  Thirty odd years ago, a ten minute bus journey into town with my own small children was enough to send me into a world of torment and fear of what might be going through the minds of the other passengers.  The thought of my once very small (and now frankly enormous) son rhythmically kicking the back of the seat in front of him for four hours despite a million pleas from me doesn’t bear thinking about.  

We moved swiftly to the rear of the plane and the promised land of a completely empty row just to ourselves.  I even got the window seat for once.  I saw the Breton coast, and later the city of Porto on the edge of the Atlantic with its myriad bridges spanning the lower reaches of the Douro.  I saw us slide serenely through wisping high cirrus that shimmered in the afternoon glow.  I saw the hulking mountains of the island at dusk as the plane banked towards the runway on the east coast.  Eight rows to the southwest, Alice, Mollie and their little co-conspirators could still be heard launching into sudden harmony from time to time.  A solo performance here, a full blown acapella there.  What a delightful cacophony not to be subjected to at point blank range.  We pretended to have forgotten the instructions to return to our allotted seats and stayed exactly where we were. 

Of course Alice and Mollie had the last word.  Probably.  After an uneventful drive to the hotel and a quiet first day resting in the sunshine by the sunset pool, Ali announced she had a sore throat.  I soon joined her, and we spent the rest of the holiday coughing, spluttering, sneezing and sounding distinctly nasal.  Of course we couldn’t be sure that our young travel buddies were really the source, but we’ve managed an entire winter without so much as a sniff between us.  And creches are a den of viral mayhem as anyone with responsibility for a toddler knows.  All of which means we weren’t quite as active in Gran Canaria as we’d planned to be.  But we did manage to get out once or twice to see the world beyond the hotel grounds.  On what was only our second holiday here, much of the island remains to be discovered.  And even a single trip to the mountains towards the end of our nine days was enough to tell me it’s worth another visit.  Even here, a little more than ten minutes out of the coastal resort of Maspalomas, the views are quite staggering.  We shall return, and hopefully in better shape next time.

Taken in: Spain / Canary Islands / San Bartolomé de Tirajana (show map)

Taken on: May 9, 2025

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Sets appears in: • Gran Canaria 2025

Groups appears in: • Beautiful Canary Islands • Landscape photography more » • Amateur Landscape • Landscapes!!! • Landscape Beauty ! • Landscapes with Atmosphere • Flickr Social Club • Photography Week • brilliant flickr • Flickr Social « less

Camera: Canon EOS 200D, f/11.0, 1/20 sec, 35mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 200D
Lens:	EF-S18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM
Aperture:	f/11.0
Exposure Time:	0.05 sec (1/20)
Focal Length:	35mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	-1 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 14.3.1 (Windows)
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