Fasten Your Seatbelts Please

(Warning: Do not read while eating your breakfast).

Someone at work once said they had ‘been vomited on from a great height’. A fabulously descriptive phrase for being dropped in it.

Well, now it’s my turn to be vomited on from a great height. Quite literally. Three thousand feet to be precise.

Having survived another awful flight in cattle class, I finally relaxed as the ‘Fasten Seatbelt’ sign was illuminated for our descent into Dublin. All wriggling by children had to now officially stop, or the police would take us off the plane (the kids believe this anyway).

Two seconds later, Number One decides he desperately needs a wee. Call bell pressed, we get special permission for him to do the fastest wee in history. All safely buckled back in, Number Two then decides to be sick. Violently. All over me.

In the final stages of our approach to the runway, and with anything potentially helpful stowed in the overhead locker out of reach, I can do nothing but sit there and let him get on with it. Unpleasant doesn’t even get close.

Finally, as we land and the plane stops at our gate, he stops. Then he grins up at me, clearly feeling much better for ‘getting it out’. I sit frozen in my seat, afraid to move and reveal the true extent of the damage done.

“You can have a shower at my mam’s”, pipes up the other half, trying to be helpful. It was not helpful. At all.

Eventually, covered from the waist down in sheer awfulness, I walk off the plane, all the way to passport control, through baggage reclaim and into the arrivals hall. I now, absolutely, know what a walk of shame feels like.

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. I’m still looking.

Fasten Your Seatbelts Please