Travel is like pregnancy

Travel is likened to pregnancy because you soon forget the bad parts, and do it again and again.

For the pregnancy part, I take the word of those who have experienced labour wards. But I’ve heard sounds emanating from those mom and child precincts and know they can turn painful.

The travel bug has bit and we’re off to far-off places. And sure enough, there were bad parts during the preparation period. Like passports and visas.

I won’t bore you with the details, like my passport had expired and a new one applied for. The delay in getting the new one back put pressure on the time to apply for two visas for two countries from consulates in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. And I won’t bore you further with how stressful it was awaiting the dreaded documents. And that we received them two days before departure.

Home and dry. Wrong.

When trying to book specific seats online, the new passport number was refused. See, my Heidi had booked seats on the old passport in January that in the interim expired, and the booking not updated.

But from thereon things turned good. The helpful lady at the airport desk not only sorted out the passport problem, but found two plum seats on the huge bird with plenty of leg room. Upstairs, nogal.

Now, I will bore you with what transpired during the flight. We got chatting to Sophie, one of the flight attendants, and inadvertently let slip I just had a birthday. Then the fun started.

Our larny dinner came from the first-class kitchen served with glass crockery and metal cutlery. With two glasses of bubbly. We felt like royalty.

It didn’t end there. At two in the morning, we were awakened by chief attendant Jimmy Carter (no relation to the Yank presidential peanut farmer) with a sealed bottle of bubbly and a birthday card. Then when we had just nodded off, Jimmy returned, offering us high tea. An assortment of biscuits and chocolates, accompanied the smart tea set totally out of place in economy class.

Had our poor fellow passengers been enabled to witness this scene they would’ve spotted the incongruity of it all.

When next the bug bites, we would’ve forgotten the bad parts. Like passports. And labour wards.

Cliff Buchler.

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