The lost art of travel

I don’t remember the heyday of travel. Way before my time. But you see it don’t you - in films or on Downton Abbey. The days when travellers wore their Sunday best, and strolled onto steam trains or stepped elegantly into propeller planes.

Flying was a luxury for those people who wore fur and knew not of ‘the weekend.’ You and I would have been on a coach trip to the seaside with a scotch egg in our back pocket.

But now, thanks to the wonder of budget airlines, we can all take to the skies. But there’s no Sunday best or elegance in the matter, as I discovered on a recent trip with our lovely friends at Ryanair.

Queuing for her onboard scratch-cards

First there’s the stampede. The flight is called and we run. Bags and limbs flailing as we sprint across the airport. Picture the scene of the Pamplona Bull Run and you’re half way there. Next it’s time to be manhandled into a waiting area where I learn how battery chickens reside. And that’s before we’ve even made it onto the plane, where cramped quarters bring out the ‘best’ in my comrades, especially when it’s announced we’ve missed the take off slot. But don’t worry, there are plenty of cheese and ham paninis on sale to keep our spirits up; cheap at half the 8 euro price tag.

And as you haven’t paid for an allocated seat, priority boarding, or simply been mugged on your way onboard, you’ll have to sit on a stranger’s lap the whole way. They’ll give you an infant’s seat belt if you’re lucky. Ah well, chocks-away.

But Ryanair, what you don’t realise is that the triumph is mine. Even with your detailed baggage dimensions and weight limit and strict policy enforcement there was no way I was paying £70 for the privilege of luggage. And now, sweet smugness. No check-in queue for me. No waiting at the carousel. No chance of you sending my bag to the wrong side of the world. Oh no.

Of course I haven’t really got enough clothes for a week, and there’s no glamour in washing your smalls in the hotel sink or running out of shampoo, but we’ll just gloss over that.

Travel’s not glamorous anyway.

How many words?

Apologies for the silence. I’ve been offline.

Turns out, the South African adventure took me to a place with no wi-fi, no internet, and no signal. So, I was out of the twittersphere, disconnected from the email and off the blog. Sort of an enforced cold turkey from my Iphone. The poor thing, it couldn’t find a hint of 3G and it didn’t know what had hit it.

As I had begun to project human emotions onto an inanimate object, perhaps a break was timely.

I have only been an Iphone owner for a month or so but I cannot think of an event that has changed my life so radically.

I have become one of ‘those people’ who bumps into people and objects as I walk along, hypnotised by its screen. It flashes, it beeps, it’s just so darn, well, touchable.

One evening, after one such beep, the boyfriend asked  “Is that an alarm because you haven’t touched it in 3 minutes?”

And then it was gone. I had no idea what was happening in the world outside of the Brown Family Holiday.

Facebook missed me at least. Whilst I was away it was sending me emails (which of course I didn’t receive) telling me what I was missing and encouraging me to come back into the fold. 

And what did I miss? Turns out, not a lot.

So, picture the scene, I’m 6000 miles from home, my contact with the outside world is lying dejected in the drawer, and oh, did I mention – there was no TV.

So what does a family of 10 (aged 8 – 85) do over the Christmas season, without a TV?

Well, we made stained glass windows from quality street wrappers, decked the place in paper chains made of newspaper and even turned the wine boxes into a Christmas tree.

But the thing we did most of all, blog readers, was play charades.

Every night. For hours.

As my 85 year old grandfather dived onto the floor to evoke the word ‘collapse’, I almost collapsed of the inevitable heart attack. So, this is what people did before TV. Seems dangerous.

I’ve been back in the country 4 hours. The laptop is on, and of course I had turned my phone on the moment we touched the tarmac.

But now I know I can survive without her, she’s going off in a moment because I’ve got something very important to do. You see, there’s a Christmas special with my name all over it.

OK team, it’s a TV show. 2 words. First word: Downton. Second word: Abbey.

A blogger bereft

Downton has finished. I got a telegram with the news and I’m heartbroken. I’m not entirely sure what I will do on a Sunday evening now. Songs of Praise just doesn’t cut it.

Let’s face it, Downton Abbey is brilliant because it looks like a costume drama but behaves like a soap.  The characters change personality every few minutes, and the plot has moments of absolutely lunacy; but as it’s about posh people and is loosely based on historical events, we conclude that it must be acceptable to watch.

And acceptable it was. The nation was hooked.

Who amongst us will forget Matthew’s tingle?  We didn’t see that coming did we? That miraculous leap when paralysed Matthew jumped from his wheelchair to rescue Lavinia from a falling tea-tray.

Lavinia sadly lost out in the public vote and died. Too obvious? Apparently not. Thank god for Spanish flu as a useful device for bumping off characters.   "It's a strange disease with sudden savage changes," said the doctor, as Lavinia began to look distinctly peaky.

Mr Molesley however did not have Spanish Flu. No, turns out he was just pissed.

And who was the mystery mummy – the one who’d survived the sinking of the Titanic, woken up with a Canadian accent and remembered that he was the long lost heir of the Abbey? Even the Eastender’s writers couldn’t have dreamt that one up.

Luckily for us all, Lord Grantham remembered just in time that he was not a lothario, and will be sticking to discussing port and dinner jackets rather than groping the maids.

Sir Richard will be starring in panto this Christmas as the wicked witch of the west.

And Edith, who used to be a bit evil, is now throwing concerned looks left right and centre.

But of course Mary and Matthew can never be together; not least because of Matthew’s over-reliance on white-face paint. “We're cursed, you and I, and there's nothing to be done about it," Matthew told Lady Mary.

I would guess that there's at least another series to be ‘done about’ exactly that.

We certainly hope so, because how would we cope without it? I’m not sure. But I won’t be defeatist. After all, it’s so middle class.