Flight experience with a splash of self reflection

This is the set up: a plane full of families full of expectations going south to seek the sun. Next to me a grandmother on holiday with her daughter and somewhere further back the daughters' three unspecified, close to teenage children.

Being stuck in a tin can for five hours, nowhere to escape, you are bound to get annoyed with your fellow passengers.

I didn't (actually) mind the babies screaming or the children running up and down the aisle, but the ladies next to me did...The only thing was that they were talking about my youngest nephew.

After a 4am start, a couple of "happy-bunny-I'm-a-globetrotter-baby" hours on the plane, just in time for the flight catering, he had a dip. Loud and clear voice (his parents are very good singers), he let us know. And it wasn't for very long, bless him. But long enough for the ladies next to me to start complaining about the baby, why was he screaming and the unspoken "why don't the parents do anything."

I felt a strong impulse to defend my brave nephew and his parents who of course did everything they could to comfort him. Which parents don't?

Then I remembered that I haven't always been so understanding myself. The number of times when I have seriously wondered why they don't have flights between Stockholm and London with age limits.

So I'm not a fairy. But my god daughter still calls me her Fairy God Mother.