The Worst Thing About Travel – Is Travelling!

As a grumpy old woman, my take on life is perhaps a little different from many, and the irritations are often too numerous to be entertaining. So I will focus on one some of you may well relate to, and that is travel!

Having been an often-solo traveller with many thousands of long-haul air miles under my bum bag, I think I am more than qualified.

In my opinion, the worst thing about travel is travelling!

Airports are my particular nemesis, where paying passengers are treated like cattle (although having said that, cattle are seen actually to be of value!), flights are delayed – plus many other problems that are often not communicated to those they most affect.

And don’t get me started on luggage! How certain people manage to get away with so-called cabin cases way over the stipulated size and weight is beyond me.

Having to stand patiently in a snake-like line to check in even though you had already carefully done so online the night before.

Then through security which could take almost as long as a flight to Malaga—making sure your precious liquid items fit into a minuscule plastic bag.  Then finally to passport control, being stared at by a usually glowering border force officer until one finally reaches the bright beckoning lights of the ‘duty-free’ shops.

Long ago, when I was gainfully employed, my company would fly me Business Class; the rationale being they needed me to be fresh and ready to ‘hit the ground running’ in whatever destination I landed.

Now, however, if there was an economy, economy ticket available, that is about all I could afford!

The downside of being in ‘steerage’ is having to stuff my not inconsiderable posterior into a narrow seat and share many intolerable hours of forced intimate space with a perfect stranger!

The art of attempting to eat plastic tasting food, balancing precarious mouthfuls from a table angled at a dangerous degree, due to the front passenger deciding to sleep off their excesses by pushing their chair back as far as it’ll go.

Then there’s the bored child sitting behind, continually kicking the back of the seat.  The same intimate stranger clambering over you in the depths of the night to get to the loo, and the increasingly malodorous smell issuing from the same loo.

Obviously, there are some upsides; I have met some really fascinating people on aeroplanes.  Somehow shared adversity leads to startling revelations. On the odd occasion, an intimate stranger has become a lifelong friend.

Travelling, by whatever mode, is merely a means to an end and one has to hope the end (arriving at a much-awaited destination) justified the means of getting there!

Then, of course, there is the return journey…