The whimsical adventures of two ladies from Hove Actually: Travelling back to the land of bland

10:00am flights are a terrible idea. I shall spend the rest of my life avoiding such flight times when travelling with mother. I recall phrases such as “just shut up and give me a cookie!!” and “it’s better not to converse with me until after eleven ok? They’re called elevenses for a reason!” So I spent an hour driving to the airport with an irritable parent while I (the early bird) managed to keep a smile on my face and confronted the airport parking guys when we arrived. Mother became frustrated when she tried to explain that; “NO! I don’t want to give you my keys! It didn’t say anything about that on your website! How can I trust you with my car? This is absurd! Are you telling me that everyone does this?!” Crisis averted when a young, strapping Clooney-esque señor emerges from the offices and mother agrees to almost anything.

Oh dear. Flight is delayed. I’m sorry to say this has happened each time we’ve flown from this airport and Mother makes it known to every airline employee she can find; “Do you know how disorganised this airport is?! It’s preposterous! I just don’t understand! London never has this problem and that’s one of the busiest airports in the world! For goodness sake why is the system not working why is our plane late?? You better sort it out …*squints at name badge* Mariluz!” Mariluz (and the surrounding staff) appear unaffected by Mother’s outburst and continue checking passports.

Finally on the plane and Mother instantly looks disgruntled again. We haven’t taken off yet. I cautiously ask her what’s wrong; “No wonder I’m not married! We’re on an entire plane full of men and I happen to be sitting next to a lesbian!”

Approximately seven minutes into the flight and Mother announces she needs a drink. Waving down an air hostess – even after I advised her of the hostess-call button above her head; “No darling, I can’t just sit here and hope they see this tiny light, I need some brandy now!” – Mother then requests a ‘drinks menu’ of sorts and is shocked when the (budget airline) air hostess informs her that there are only two brands of brandy (excuse the pun). Mother is then ‘forced’ to choose and spends the next fifteen minutes making unnecessary disapproving faces at the plastic mini bottle and suggesting that all delayed flights should have complimentary caviar and champagne for all passengers.

The arrival in Brighton gave us both quite a shock to the system as we travelled down from Gatwick on the (smelly, dirty) train. Of course it was raining so we sloshed through the cigarettes and other questionable trash on the ground to arrive at the dullest store I know – a fabric store with boring employees selling boring net curtains for boring bores. I managed to escape into a display sofa with my very British (Danish) pastry. Hours later we ventured back out into the rain and we behaved as though we were new borns discovering precipitation for the very first time; lots of squealing and sheltering. In this process, Mother decided it would be a grand idea to photograph our fellow shoppers. This was the result: