. . . on travelling companions
MY MOTHER TAKES advantage of the free travel by accompanying us on most of our family mini-breaks. She’s wonderful company, you see. We pass the train journeys to Sligo or Cork or Galway talking about life and family and books. At the moment, we are both reading William Trevor’s beautiful and heartbreaking Story of Lucy Gault for our book club so she’ll tell me about the time she met the author in the Mansion House. “Lovely man,” she will say, remembering.
To insensitive outsiders, it can appear as if we have ulterior motives in travelling with my mother. “I see you’ve brought the babysitter,” complete strangers on trains will often take it upon themselves to comment, as she cradles a nearly-three-year-old on either side of her and gets stuck into yet another Noddy book.
The truth is that it simply never occurs to us that bringing another adult along, even one with Mary Poppins-like childminding abilities, will make our mini-breaks that bit more enjoyable. I suppose now you mention it, there are certain advantages to having another grown up around. But still, it’s completely unfair to suggest that our main motive for asking her to join us is that it makes our lives easier and means we can go out for dinner, just the two of us.
As a family of two adults, two children and one Definitely Not A Babysitter, this travelling business can be stressful. There’s always the part when we are settled on the train and we wonder, panic-stricken, whether every last piece of our luggage is actually on board. One of the adults has a tendency to pack as though we are emigrating. You know, so that should anything unexpected occur on our mini-break we could start a new life in the new location. His émigré-style packing habits mean that sometimes, just as the train is about to leave, we look outside and realise we’ve left something on the platform. A bag containing the complete works of AA Milne, say. Or the kitchen sink.
To block off other avenues of possible stress we tend to pre-book our seats. If we ended up being scattered around there’d be no point in having the Definitely Not A Babysitter along. She could end up alone, reading to pass the time or just sitting in contemplative silence enjoying the peace and the scenery hurtling past. And what would be the point of that? No. Travelling is stressful enough, thank you very much.
We pre-book our seats so that we are sitting all together, four seats being enough to accommodate three adults and two small children.
Except on our latest mini-break we book the tickets a bit late and can only manage to get three seats together and a single seat in the opposite section. When we get our gazillion bags and ourselves on the train a 20-something woman, working on a laptop, is sitting in her own pre-booked space beside our three seats. I make a quick calculation. Asking her to move into one of the four empty seats across the way will be easier than having to explain to the two people booked in those other seats that we’d appreciate them moving. I do this quick calculation in my head and am delighted with myself. I ask the girl if she would mind. She is very good about it.
There’s a slight problem though. The place she was sitting in was convenient to the socket into which her laptop is plugged. Now the lead from her computer is stretched across the aisle creating a possible health and safety issue. No problem though. I calculate in my head that if I just make sure I say to every person passing to watch out for the lead then nobody will end up going over on their ear leading to a possible law suit. I keep vigil, averting at least a dozen potential accidents. “Mind the lead,” I say. “Just watch the lead.” “Mind the lead there.” “Watch you don’t trip.”
After half an hour of this I notice the émigré-packer and the Definitely Not A Babysitter looking at me strangely. He decides to tackle the elephant in the carriage. He says that, in trying to avoid conversations with two passengers, I am now having unnecessary conversations with virtually every person on the train – and would it not have been better to let the lady with the laptop stay where she was. This is red-rag territory. Here I am trying to keep the show on the road, the train on the tracks as it were, and he is deliberately and publicly undermining me.
There follows a row conducted entirely through the medium of under-the-breath comments and dirty looks of the type of passive-aggressive nature I always think is worse than a full-blown, audible row. The row gets so nasty that at one point the Definitely Not A Babysitter mutters something about never coming away with us on a mini-break again if we keep this up.
The effect is powerful and immediate. Calm is instantly restored to our part of the carriage. I smile sweetly at the émigré-packer and he asks if he can possibly fetch me anything from the dining car.
I know we are both thinking the same thing: our trips away with the children just wouldn’t be the same without my mother’s insights on William Trevor.
In other news
Life Support is a new compilation album of Irish music in aid of Pieta House, the suicide and self-harm crisis centre. The album will be launched at the Mercantile, on Dame Street in Dublin on April 24th with a special gig of acoustic performances from Delorentos, We Cut Corners, Ross Breen and EleventyFour