5 Types of People You Encounter on Every Flight

Having recently travelled to Italy and back, and being largely bored on my flight, I got to looking around the cabin and realising that I see the same people on every flight; irrespective of class, duration or carrier.   

That got me putting them into categories....and that led to me writing this when I was absolutely sure that no one was looking over my shoulder, ready to give me a good slap in the face.  

These are my five classes of flyers.     I come under Category 4.    Just in case you were wondering.    

The Uncontrollable Child:

I seem to have the uncanny knack of booking myself into a seat directly in front of or behind the World’s Crankiest Child.     I am that person who has disciplined someone’s child at 30,000ft.       I don’t do it lightly, though; but if I pay for a flight, I’m not content to sit for 4 hours with your brat of a child kicking the back of my seat at two second intervals just because you have no control over them.   You don’t control them; I will.   

Don’t get me wrong – I like children…particularly the ones who bring doggie toys on their flights.   How can children that like puppies possibly turn into anything but wonderful adults*?  Exactly.      What I hate are children who make so much noise (that their worn out parents can clearly hear) and are left to get on with it.

Before you ask; yes, I have travelled on numerous occasions with a young child.   I have a stepson who is 16 and, for a lot of those years, he wasn’t (obviously).  He was regularly strapped into a seat on a flight as a 2-10 year old and instructed to behave.   And he did.

The only exception to my rule is sick babies.     When a baby starts to scream on a flight, everyone on board is pretty much screwed.  You can’t reason with babies.   You can’t offer to pay for extortionately priced Pringles and a Capri Sun in the hope that they’ll shut up.    You can’t bribe a baby.   Babies are too smart for that shit.     And the parents of crying, flying babies are all legends.

The parents of bratty, ill mannered, screaming 5 year olds?  Not so much.  

*Michael Vick is the obvious exception to this.  

Make it stop.   I beg you.  Make it stop. 

The Stiletto Wearing Bleached Blondes:

Lord knows, I like a pair of heels.     I’m definitely not a fan of bleach, though, but my hair is already blonde, so that might well account for that. 

I don’t mind getting dressed up every so often, if I’m going on a night out, or for dinner with Les, or even just if I’m feeling a bit low and know that a nice dress and good shoes will lift my mood.

I have NEVER, however, got dolled up to sit in an airport.    My airport wear is strictly stretchy pants, t-shirt and hoody.     My footwear?  Flip flops (if I’m heading somewhere I know will be hot), or comfy flats for any other destination.  

Wearing fitted stuff and high heels is a no go for me.    I need to be comfortable on a flight and, luckily, I don’t give a toss about what anyone else thinks of this. 

I can think of little worse that hanging around the airport lounge in a strappy dress and heels waiting to walk up those metal plane stairs, where it’ll almost definitely be windy enough to throw my dress up round my neck and show people my tan lines.      Or lack of, if it’s the outward leg. 

I have similar feelings about make up.    What’s the point?   All I’m going to do is sit bolt upright on a largely uncomfortable seat and while the hours away, wondering why anyone in their right minds would pay €4 for a quarter tube of Cheese and Sour Cream Pringles.     And then I remember: Bratty Children.

I recently got stuck behind a girl at Liverpool John Lennon who looked as if she was headed on a posh night out.    Alas, no…she headed straight to the airside Wetherspoons in 6-inch heels, a silky cat suit, and more jewelry and makeup that I own.      If she still looks that good after spending 3 hours on a Ryanair flight to Alicante and then tottering up a cobbled street on the way to her hotel, then I want to know how she did it.   And I want her barred from returning to the UK.

Who has this much time?    I'm doing well if I wash my hair before heading to the airport.  

The Arm Rest Hogger:

As I said before, I fly because I have to.    I’m not a strong enough swimmer to make it to Italy without the aid of a lifeboat of five, so it’s really the only way to see the places I want to see.

Although I’ve travelled frequently over the years, there’s one person I hate on a flight.     Yes…it’s the Arm Rest Hogger.  

This is the stranger you end up next to when you’re wedged in the middle seat between the single hippie and someone from a hen/stag party.     This is the person with whom you spend your entire flight locked in a fierce battle of wills.

There is an unwritten rule (in my head) that means everyone should have one arm rest each, with the exception of the person in the window or aisle seat.   No one, but NO ONE deserves to have All Of The Armrests.    

All passengers should claim the armrest to their left, or right, leaving the person at the window or aisle with the fabulously thrilling prospect of being able to lay both elbows down without fear of repercussion.  

Being the only person in the row with two armrests is one of the many joys of being alive.     And, as such, it should be treasured with the proper amount of gratitude and offer of drinks for the person next to you.   

Taking up two armrests when you’re in the middle seat just makes you mean.    And selfish.    And deserving of me immediately stealing the second one the INSTANT you move; go for something from your bag; summon the hostess; and/or visit the toilet.   I didn’t even *want* two armrests, but it’s suddenly become my goal in life.

Yeah, I'm just gonna stretch riiiiiiiiight out here beside you and invade your personal space, strange human I've never met before. 

The Quite No Toileters:

I am the shy, awkward traveller that falls into this category.   I refuse to move out of my seat to visit the toilet on ANY flight, unless there is a medical emergency.    I always pop to the loo before I board and I won’t drink on a flight unless I am actually seated right outside the facilities.

If I’m, say…seated near the front in Row 12A, and it’s an 11 row walk to the toilet, I will be the one with the crossed legs who is desperate to disembark first.      If I’m half way between the front and the back facilities, I simply can’t deal with the calculations and will stay put.     

If I’m in the middle or window seat, regardless of where I’m sat, I will not move.    I’m not entirely sure whether this comes from, but I’m guessing from many years getting up and down out of my seat to let people past.     I will only ever venture to the toilet if the following conditions are met:

·      * It’s not more than a few feet away; I’m at the end of an aisle and it’s vacant.

·      * I have a urinary tract infection.  

I swear I become camel like on a flight.  I retain all of my liquid until it actually causes my physical discomfort.  I’m not entirely sure why I’m like this, but it’s been going on for years, so it’s unlikely to change any time soon.    Until, of course, I am pretty old and simply cannot exist for an hour without a toilet break.   Alternatively, I might just buy those Tena lady things that I keep seeing on TV.   Actually, I might buy them now.

Even if I knew the plane bathroom looked like this, I still wouldn't go.   

The Clappers:

I understand that people are thrilled to be landing safely, despite being on the one of the safest modes of transport, but what I can’t deal with is people who actually clap on landing.

WHAF, people?    That’s like Les clapping when I deposit us in the Tesco car park in one piece in my little Toyota.    In fact, let’s not go down that particular road, as I’m fairly certain he might have done that once or twice.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that I don’t like you.   I don’t get it.  Were you worried that our pilot was so bad that she/he wouldn’t make it?   If so, what the HELL are you doing on the flight in the first place?   Seriously.  

I have NEVER clapped when I’ve arrived anywhere by train, bus, tram, on foot (because obviously) or airplane, simply because I trust that the person in charge of my mode of transport has at very least passed their theory test.    If I was your pilot, I’d be raging if you clapped when I executed a textbook landing as if you didn’t think I had it in me.  

I know that you’re flying and it’s in the sky and an accident/crash will likely lessen your chances of breathing again, but really, people; show some self respect.

DO NOT CLAP.    EVER.*

Seriously.   Clap when your football team scores; when your favourite band play your song...anything but when your flight does what you expected it to in the first place:  land in one piece.  

* Unless you land on the Hudson and every passenger makes it out alive in some sort of miracle landing after your engines have been taken out by birds.     If that happens, knock yourself out.

Do you have anyone else to add to the list of people you find on flights?   I was going to include the harsh judgmental woman in seat 3A, but I think we’ve already established her existence.   

Suzanne x 

My Hand Luggage Essentials

I like to travel light.   I’m also pretty lazy on holiday, so I’ve never been one for carting around hairdryers and straighteners.  I barely use them at home, so there’s little chance of me busting them out when I’m supposed to be relaxing.      

The lack of these electrical items generally means that my hand luggage can be difficult to fill.   That and the fact that I can’t obviously fill it with toiletries these days, like I used to. 

Despite my trusty hand luggage not being crammed to the brim, these are the things I can’t live without on any flight:

The Travel Bug:

Obviously.  That little bug is the first thing to be packed ANYWHERE I go, and I’m including Asda and B&Q in that statement.   I feel odd if I leave the house without him now and he’d be a rubbish Travel Bug if he stayed at home in North Wales all the time, wouldn’t he?

TTB sits at the top of my hand luggage and often earns me odd looks from security when they rifle through my stuff looking for liquids, tweezers and Semtex.   

I often worry that some over-alert guard will think my little stuffed amigo has a kilo of heroin stuffed up his bum and will rip him to shreds in front of my eyes, rendering me speechless and heartbroken.    It hasn’t happened yet.    The mere thought of that is the reason I always look so nervous at security.    Honestly…

This little champ is my constant travel companion. The wine in the background is mine.  He prefers red.  

iPhone:

On a flight back from Paris a few weeks ago, I spent the journey home blogging on my phone.  I use the Blogger app, so it means I can just turn on aeroplane mode and furiously type away.    It makes the time pass a bit quicker and makes me feel like I’m being all productive and stuff.  I only start once I’ve read the inflight magazine; obviously…I don’t want to miss out on news about the latest destination.   Or, indeed, any duty free offers on makeup.  

iPad:

I need this to catch up with The Walking Dead/House of Cards and all the other shows that I never get a chance to watch during a regular week.  Holidays are the only time I really get to properly sit back and do nothing without feeling guilty that I’m sitting back doing nothing.

I also use my iPad for the Audible app every night to help me sleep, so I never leave for a night away without it.   I'm also finding it increasingly difficult to be away from Doug the Pug, Mr Bentley the Bulldog, and an assortment of other social media doggies that make me smile on a daily basis.  

I need this with me constantly for blogging, Twitter, Insta and reading news.

Baby Wipes:

I rarely go far without baby wipes as they’re perfect for waking yourself up at the end of a flight, keeping you from feeling disgusting on a long haul, or just to take your makeup off on a night flight before you catch some shut eye.   They’re cheap and cheerful and can be used for pretty much anything. 

Also: whipping wipes out on a flight totally makes you look you’ve got your shit together when, in fact,  just because you’ve packed your wet ones doesn’t mean you didn’t leave home without your toothbrush*

Two Purses:

I hate mixing Euros or Dollars in with my Sterling, so I take a little purse which I use to pay for all the overpriced stuff at the airport and then put all my holiday money in my every day purse. 

This means I don’t spend ages looking through coins going ‘ooh, this coin was from my week in Valencia, and this was from…hmmm…might have been Krakow… or maybe Prague…’ *cue memories montage*… while people get all antsy behind me in the queue at the local Carrefour.  I hate that.    

I can't deal with mixed currencies.  Gotta keep them separate.  

Flip Flops:

It doesn’t matter where on the planet I go, I will find a use for these bad boys; even if it’s just for a few hours on the flight.    I wander around my office with no shoes on most of the time, so the chances of me getting through any kind of travel without taking my shoes off is virtually nil.   

Flip flops practically scream ‘HOLIDAAAAAAAAY!’.   Even picking them up to pack them makes me smile, so actually putting them ON  my feet is my idea of heaven.   Never underestimate the positive, mood enhancing power of flip flops;  they are the Bank Holiday weekend of shoes.  

What are your hand luggage essentials??

*Yes, I have.  

Suzanne x

8 Things I've Learned Since Moving To North Wales

1: Always Set Off From Home Early.

Having travelled extensively across Scotland for work, I am fairly used to driving behind camper vans and caravans, or even just foreign drivers who are a bit unsure of the roads.    It has come as no real surprise then that my part of North Wales is much the same as Scotland.    

It’s a daily occurrence that, when travelling from home to Dolgellau, I will absolutely, definitely end up stuck behind a tractor or a bus that has problems navigating some of the very narrow, winding coastal roads.    There isn’t always space to overtake and you never quite know what’s coming the other way, so I find its best just to relax and enjoy the view, knowing that you'll get to where you're going eventually.

Let's face it, there are worse places to be stuck behind a bus.  

2: Watch out for Kamikaze Sheep

There are lots of sheep in North Wales.  Yeah, I know, that’s not really news to anyone.    Being Scottish, I’m accustomed to seeing them everywhere I go.   However, unlike the mild mannered, calm and mostly field-enclosed Scottish sheep, Welsh sheep are mental.  

On my first venture to Llanberis, I spotted a few errant sheep grazing next to a stone wall by the side of the road.   By the time I drove past, one of them bounced over the wall, Greg Rutherford style, and landed with his head on my bumper.  I’m not even kidding – my car was attacked by a sheep.   After getting over the fright, I checked my rear view mirror to see him shaking himself off and carrying on across the road, where he continued his grass munching like nothing had happened.   

     

The other day, whilst singing at the top of my voice in the car on the way to work, the bus in front of me had to brake hard in order to avoid a crazy sheep that was running up the middle of the carriageway.    The fact that it was holding up traffic didn’t bother him and he was having a lovely time darting along the tarmac.   Maybe he was late for an appointment and realised that road travel is the quickest way into Dolgellau, I just don’t know. 

It’s always best to be on the lookout as you never know when the Kamikaze Sheep of North Wales will pounce…

Just because we look cute, doesn't mean we won't take you all down... 

3: You’ll Struggle To Pronounce Place Names

It took me several weeks of butchering the names of the towns and villages in North Wales before I finally got to grips with the pronunciation.   The Welsh people here are fiercely proud of their language, as they should be, and, on first glance, you will be alarmed at the sheer lack of vowels utilised on road signs.   After a few weeks of making a complete arse of the language, you will find a lovely native to correct your, quite frankly horrible, attempts at Welsh, and you’ll be able to speak freely without fear of being kicked back to wherever you came from.  

Honestly, I can’t tell you how long I mispronounced ‘Dolgellau’ before I realised how to say it properly.   In case you’re wondering, it’s Dol-Geth-Lie, or something very similar…

Hello, vowels??

4: If you’re Not Welsh, Speak Slowly

I work in an office in a predominately Welsh speaking community, with some of the most fabulous accents I’ve heard and I’ve had to drastically slow down my speech.   I tend to talk really quickly and, living in Scotland, this never caused me a problem.  Now that I’m in Wales, I find people peer at me and look dumbfounded.  This is usually my cue to realise that I’ve said something completely incomprehensible to non-Scottish ears and I have to repeat myself slowly until they smile and say ‘Why, yes, I see what you mean!’ or ‘Seriously? THAT’s what haggis is made from??’ 

Conversely, I’ve had a few telephone conversations that have caused me to ask, on more than one occasion, if someone can repeat themselves so that I can try to work out what on earth they’ve been saying.  The strong accents on both sides have caused a bit of hilarity in the office when I’ve passed on a message to a colleague:   ‘Nigel called for you, Deilwen – can you ring him back, please?’   ‘Nigel?  Who’s that, then?’,  ‘Ummm….I don’t know, he said he was from the Swansea fraud office…’,    ‘Oh, MICHAEL… 

Say it with a strong Welsh accent and you might see where I went wrong.  

   

5:  Welsh People Don’t All Sound Like Nessa from Gavin and Stacey

I assumed, in my naivety about the fine people of Wales, that everyone would sound, well… Welsh.   As it turns out, a lot of people I’ve met sound more English to my ear, despite being born and bred in the nation. Unlike Scotland, where I can pick out a Glaswegian, Aberdonian or Edinburgh native just from the words they use, I’m at a loss here.   

In the same vein that Americans tend to think I’m English or Irish because they don’t hear the accents enough to differentiate between the UK nations, I’m having much the same problem in Wales.  What I DO know, however, is that Welsh accents I DO hear are soft and musical and I really want one.  

I’m also still desperate for someone to ask me ‘what’s occurring?, or to have an involved conversation about Mint Baileys.        

Just when you think you've seen it all....

6: You Will End Up Saying ‘I Am’ or ‘I Do’ After Most of Your Sentences

Obviously, as most of my Welsh knowledge was based on episodes of Gavin and Stacey, I had heard these phrases before.   However, the first time a real, live Welsh person said them to me was the highlight of my year.   As well as the accent being gorgeous, it’s just such a lovely turn of phrase.    

I recently caught myself offering my colleague a lift home by saying, ‘I’m going that way anyway, I am…’  and now I can’t seem to stop it.    I’m all ‘I love that, I do’ or ‘I’m going to buy wine now, I am’.  Basically, I now speak a Welsh colloquial version of English in a strong Scottish accent.   And yes, it sounds odd.  

7:  Everyone Has a Shortened Name

Much like my Aussie friends and family have their names shortened from Lindsay to Linno, Matthew to Matty, and we Scots don’t recognise names like James (Jimmy) or Thomas (Tam), Welsh people are fond of nicknames.  

Deilwen is Deil, Richard is Rich, Ilona is Lons, and Nathan is Nath.  It either means that everyone knows each other really well or they really can’t be bothered using someone’s full name.   Either way, I’m good with it.   I’m still called Suzanne for the moment, though, but I’m hoping to have this shortened soon.   The only person who calls me Suzanne is my Mum and it’s generally followed by a stern talking to about something I’ve done wrong.   The use of my full name makes me quite nervous.  

 

8: Welsh People Are Extremely Friendly

This probably isn’t true for ALL Welsh people, just as it’s not true that all Scots are tight with money and are addicted to whisky.  The Welsh don’t all grow daffodils and keep dragons as pets, either.  Although they totally should.   Think of how burglary statistics would go down if people had fiery red dragons slumbering peacefully at the end of their beds.  It’s definitely something that the Welsh Assembly should be hotly debating (pun intended).

Anyway, all the Welsh people I’ve met (and bearing in mind I work for DWP), have been bloody lovely.   We seem to share the same principles and values and have a passion for football and rugby, even though we might not exactly be world beaters at either.  

In addition, I’ve still to meet a Welsh person who hasn’t regaled me with stories of holidaying in Scotland and this never fails to make me smile.   Unfortunately, these stories are often accompanied by tales of being tight and drinking to excess, so it kind of reinforces the stereotypes I was trying to disprove earlier.   Oh well, if you can’t beat them….

Ok, so this isn't the best representation of a scary dragon, but look at his face!  Sooo cute.