Yesterday I was standing at my appropriate departure gate at London’s Stansted Airport where I watched RyanAir’s personnel efficiently carrying out their policy about refusing late passengers entry to the plane.  The passengers in this instance were a family comprising what appeared to be a mother, father and two young children (one of which it should be noted was a baby).

Having sat on a plane waiting for a last minute passenger needing hair restoration surgery who finally turned up with a bag full of duty free booze proclaiming why they were so late, I don’t have a lot of tolerance with people who can’t present themselves for their flight on time.  However there are situations which mean that sometimes you get held up and if you are moving from one end of an airport to another with small children these situations seem to be more common.  The first problem is the security checks where you must aid your children out of their jackets etc.  Even trickier with a baby!  Then putting these items back on whilst any buggy is thoroughly investigated for illegal substances and security measures.  Not to mention ensuring that your other stuff such as passport/travel documents and personal effects aren’t tampered with whilst your attention is on your children.  Following this, Stansted also wants to examine all shoes and so a parent travelling with children has to get their own shoes off, plus their child’s, and then of course put them back on again.  This is stressful because it takes time and as a parent you’re very much aware of the sighing businessman needing skin mole removal surgery for his face, standing behind you in the line, complete with his neat laptop bag, expensive suit and impatient expression.

The stress doesn’t end there.  You can see from the screen that you have a departure gate number for your flight, and you know the direction to go, but then your child needs the bathroom, and as any parent is only too aware of the safety issues surrounding children in airports you must accompany the child.  Having seen to that child’s bathroom needs, and having got halfway to the appropriate departure gate – in Stansted’s case this involves negotiating the most crazy arrangement ever created of moving between floor levels at numerous points along the way – you discover the baby is stinking and the other passengers won’t be happy so you have to find a toilet area, and change the nappy.  Trying to make it to the plane is like trying to complete a cyrstal maze >treasure hunt test. No wonder parents travelling with small children look frazzled by the time they get to their appointed departure gate.

Yesterday the plane was still on the ground, the doors were open and the stairs were still in place.  Despite this, and the fact it would take less than 3 minutes for this family to board the plane, RyanAir’s gate crew declared the flight closed and the family was not allowed to board.  The mother was extremely distressed, her loud sobs echoing in the heart of any parent who knows how much effort it took for her to get there and how so easily a toilet visit could have put them in the same situation.  The little boy was crying.  The baby was crying.  The father looked completely devastated.  Meanwhile minutes passed while the crew outside located the baggage belonging to the family that had already been put into the plane, and removed it.   The time it took to locate and remove the baggage was far greater than it would have taken to show some compassion to an already stressed out family and allow them to board the plane.

I don’t know what the fate of this family was.  I don’t know if they were able to get another plane yesterday, or if they would be stranded overnight with a baby and small child to care for – as they weren’t English and probably returning home from vacation, they may also have been on extremely limited funds.  What I do know is that whilst RyanAir may be patting itself on the head for having the least number of cancellations when lined up against its competitors, they should be hanging their heads for creating this situation.   I think it would be a far better promotional point to be able to say that they were the best family orientated airline, especially when traditional family values are supposedly being bandied around at Government level.  At the moment, the attitude yesterday – coupled with their policy of people having to pay additional costs for priority boarding (RyanAir, as with some of their economy flight competitors no longer automatically allow people travelling with young children to board first) – this airline is ranking somewhere near the bottom of the family friendly airline list! 

Shame on you RyanAir!

People say that I’m the perfect age to have a mid life crises. Well I’m staunchly saying that I’m NOT having any thing of the sort, I’ve just chosen to make a few changes in my life. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? You have to seize the moment, do what you’re going to do now, make it happen or the window will pass and all you’ll have left is the thoughts of things that could have been.

So in my bid to change my life, I started by going to the internet. Where better to start than to source of all things? I started by looking in Google for search UK property to find a decent property website. Do you know the range of places that are available to live in? Just even knowing the possibilities excited me! I could do anything from live in an old church to a fully working farm. I didn’t buy online however, and I haven’t moved yet. I’m not sure I’m going to, but there is something about knowing that I’m not stuck where I am that changed how I view my situation. Rather than feeling trapped, I’m now glad I live where I live. What seemed circumstance beyond my control has become a conscious choice. Now, I am living where I want to live, and even though nothing has changed physically, I am so much happier with my life.

What I did end up buying from the internet however was a, well, a procedure in a clinic. I feel a little embarrassed to say it in a way, but I’m a little on the tubby side, always have been. It’s also always been something that bothered me, so I’ve done something about it. I’ve booked in for chest reduction at a place called court house clinics. I can’t recommend them either way yet, it’s scheduled for next week, but I think I’m actually looking forward to it.

My final big change was to buy a horse. Well, try and buy a horse! I used to ride when I was young, and I’d like to again. I actually found one that was both within my price range and a fine animal. However, it seems that keeping one is a little more expensive than I thought! The actual upkeep is substantial. You have to cover everything from the food and stables, to paying for equine liability and stable staff. In the end I went in on a horse share with someone! I own half a horse – hopefully not the back end!

So reading all this, do you think I’m going through a mid life crises? Whether I am or not, at the end of the day I don’t really care. I’m making some changed in my life that are making my life better for myself, and that’s the most important thing.

So, being an actor is actually pretty hard work.

I learned this in kindergarten. I was drawing a picture of what I wanted to be when I grew up (a film star, of course). I must admit, it was a smashing depiction: long blonde hair, a fabulous red sequin dress, VERY high heels and to top off the ensemble, a lovely purple feather boa. I learned being an actor would be pretty hard work, because I had to share the purple crayon with the little boy who wanted to be a dentist. (Sometimes, it’s best not to ask questions–)

However, now that I’m (mostly) grown-up, I have come to realize that it’s really pretty difficult to find facets of myself in the characters I play. It's like playing a treasure hunt in your soul for something that you hope is there, but may not be. Sometimes, you find the treasure you are looking for, but other times… in this particular case (I’m playing a solider accused of abusing prisoners of war), it’s really REALLY hard!

First of all, I have no idea what it is like to be in the military. I have spent a lot of time reading, watching war films (GI Jane was really pretty great! What’s not to love about a totally ripped Demi Moore?!) and chatting with people who had enlisted. I was pretty amazed at some of the stories I ran across: there are several accounts of immense valor and bravery–it almost made me want to enlist myself. Of course, I came to my senses before signing on the dotted line–

Secondly, I have no idea what it is like to inflict physical abuse. I have never been in a fight. I have never struck another human being with my bare fist. (I have been a student of Tae Kwon Do, so I have done a little bit of sparring, but HEAVILY padded–so really, I feel that doesn’t count, especially since punches were pulled). Where does the urge for violence come from?

But, the bottom line is, it doesn’t matter if I have actually experienced it or not. What matters is if I can convey the mental anguish and guilt of the character.

That’s hard.

Having spent the past few days trying to put together a resource library for a project I’m going to work on, I have to wonder why some people don’t think that information –such as a publication date – is important when they are selling time-sensitive items on eBay.   As a travel writer I need to have information that’s as current as possible for the areas I can’t physically travel to, and because I want to get a number of different source references, I prefer to purchase my resources from eBay rather than a traditional bookstore where the full cost would restricted the number of books I could buy.

Usually this works quite well for my various project needs, but it’s been a frustrating few days trying to ascertain how old some of these guidebooks are.  Is there really any point in selling a guidebook for New Orleans that predates Katrina for example?  New Orleans was almost wiped out during that time, and anyone who wasn’t old enough that year to see the news reports, or didn’t take any notice of the extent of the damage could be forgiven for buying a book that’s a few years old and now bears little resemblance to the city that now remains.  A similar thing could be said about travel guides for New York City that pre-date the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre – although these books do have a historical significance as testament to how things looked before the New York City skyline changed. 

Having spent countless hours matching up blurred book cover images at eBay against those at Amazon (which reminded me bizzarely of a corporate team building exercise I once did) I issue a heartfelt plea to eBay booksellers – please, please, please put the publication date on your listing.  Also, if it was published more than 2 years ago, it doesn’t matter what condition it is, in travel guide terms it’s not exactly “new”.  It would be more exact if you could check if this was the current edition or whether there has been an updated version since the one you’re selling was published – the bonus to this to you is that buyers of travel guides (like myself) are willing to pay more for a book that’s still the “current” version of the book!

Meanwhile, I’ve now completed my shopping and now await the arrival of my books – which I hope to be the editions that I think they are based on my cover comparison detective work!