Heathrow. The English version of Guantanamo Bay?

More of that later.

So we're back in Brisvegas, having had a lovely but short couple of weeks back home, bookended by the eventful travelling hardships. Home, where we managed to spend as much time as possible with our family during what is a particularly difficult time of year for all of us. Where Aibhe got to meet, bond and be spoilt completely by her Irish family and have her first roll. Where we saw the beautifully appropriate garden in Holy Family, River Valley built in memory of Marian. And where as always, leaving again is the hardest part. But now we've done it with a baby, so anything is possible.

We have some big thank you's. To Mum & Dad for having us and for the organisation of the GAA club afternoon. It was the only time we managed to see so many of our friends - albeit for a short time, but it was so important we were able to do it. To Ferg & Sinead for the time and attention and the obtaining of the car seat.... which leads to a big thanks to Deirdre and Liam. To Derek, Meabh, Cian and Ais and the lovely time in Ballymac. To Ken, Annemarie, Gav & Clare - for you know what - God knows what our luggage would have been like without you.

For all those who gave presents for Aibhe - so many that we had to send a separate box home which we're currently waiting for. Thanks sooooo much. She'll be dressed for the next year in Irish gear!

We arrived back on Thursday night - minus one bag - and I went to work the following day. Not sure if I added much to the Virgin Blue bottom line mind you.

For all those who may be interested, the following is a reasonably accurate account of the trips themselves, so if you are to do it yourselves with a young infant, know what to expect. Bear in mind the detailed planning that goes into all of this when it comes to having enough bottles for every take-off and landing, nappies & wipes, blankets for the bassinet, toys for entertaining and then the odd thing we need for ourselves.

Brisbane to Dublin
Departure from Brisbane. All good. Singapore Airlines ready and raring to go. Aibhe has the bottle practically finished by the time the plane takes off, but that all OK, we manage to keep her sucking a dummy for a while longer (see lingo dictionary below). I think the 7.5 hour flight to SIN was pretty OK. No movies watched.

Arrive SIN at what was I guess midnight by our body clocks at the time. Couldn't find our connecting flight to Manchester until I realised it was actually a flight to Zurich which then continued on to Manchester. Oh sweet lordy Jaysus. And Aibhe had already skulled one bottle more than planned. Having got over the shock of knowing we had an extra landing and take-off to deal with, we sourced some boiling water, heated up the next bottle and boarded the plane........ for bloody Zurich. In a nutshell, that one wasn't too bad, except of course for the constant interruptions due to turbulence when we had to take Aibhe out of the bassinet (thereby waking her AGAIN), strapping her on to one of us and trying to get her back to sleep. She still slept for 6 hours, but we began to dread every tiny little airplane shudder - in fairness Singapore Airlines are just a little anal about all that - completely unnecessary most of the time and we have since found out that if you have an infant it is recommended that you find an airline that doesn't require you to "baby Afa out, baby Afa out!!" every time they feel a little shiver at 10km high. Anyway, I think we managed 2 or 3 hours sleep and even squeezed in a movie.

Arrive ZUR, 12.5 hours later. Looked nice from the plane. Very Swiss. One hour wait and then off again to Manchester - 1.5 hours.

Arrive MAN where we had to transfer terminals and wait for the pretty incompetant transfer desk heads to give us our boarding passes. We had a 5 hour wait in this place and as we were without sterilised bottles for the next journey, it was all about organisation and boiling water and cleaning dummies and mixing formula and generally trying to stay awake while Aibhe got more and more pissed off with all this shite. We couldn't blame her. Of course she had her biggest screaming fit ever (I believe) when Alissa had gone off to get a few things, therefore leaving me to look like the helpless Dad with very unhapppy baby. Then had some smug dipshit chick come over and ask if I wanted her to take Aibhe and then tells me she was hungry (Aibhe that is). I know she's f&cking hungry ye spanner, I just don't know which container my wife has used for this particular feed and I can't get that wrong or God help me!! I had a guess anyway and had Aibhe back to normal within a few minutes having told smug dipshit chick that I can deal with it. 5 minutes later Alissa came back oblivious to all of this - perhaps the only tell tale sign was the stress twitch over my eye. FINALLY, we boarded the Aer Lingus flight home - having had an initial scare that the plane was going to be delayed by another hour.

Arrive DUB. 36 hours after leaving BNE. F&CKED.


Dublin to Brisbane

Now after that escapade above, one would hardly think that the trip back could live up to it? This was due to take 26 hours start to finish, so we reckoned it would be a piece of piss by comparison.

5am, Dublin Airport. Bedlam reigns supreme. We waited for 1 hour 15 minutes to get checked in. BMI had ONE (yes, ONE) counter checking people in, on the assumption that everyone had e-tickets so they could use the kiosks and do bag-drops. Of course, if on international connectors, thats not a runner - so you must wait in line. And BMI, being a star alliance partner had lots of people connecting to international flights. Anyway, as bad as all that was, we made it to the gate as they boarded for the 6.45 departure. All set to go. Phew. No big deal. Captain announces that due to problems with air traffic control in Heathrow, we'll be stuck here for an hour. Oh here we f&cking go. There goes take-off bottle and so we entertained Aibhe for the hour and then off we went. I reckon we circled for about 20 minutes before finally landing so getting the time right to feed the wee one was like a betting game.

Ahhhh. Arrival in Heathrow. I don't believe in hell in the afterlife, but I certainly believe in it down here. 3 letters. LHR. It's a prison. It's a building site. It's a 3rd world ramshakle mess of a WIP that needs to be razed to the ground and started again. It's the intestines of a dead rat. How do they get away with it? A sub-account of this leg.

• The usual arrival into the arse-end of Terminal 1 where they force all the Irish planes in case we're still carrying rotten potatoes to throw at Maggie Thatcher or Oliver Cromwell.
  
• 20 minutes walk to the bus to Terminal 3
• 10 minutes wait for bus to Terminal 3
  
• 10 minutes on bus to Terminal 3
• Straight to Flight Connections area where it takes 20 minutes to get our boarding passes as the guy behind the counter fails to tell me that its Aibhe's Aussie passport he needs and not her Irish one. Well excuse me - I was supposed to know this?
• 1.5 hours wait in Terminal 3 lounge, feed baby, feed ourselves, watch for Gate to be named.... gate named
  
• 15 minute walk to Gate where we got on...... a BUS of course (there was us expecting to go by plane to Kuala Lumpur)
• Seriously - 15 minutes on the bus where at one stage I thought we were being taken to Gatwick - but no, we were taken to the middle of nowhere where lo and behold, there was a Malaysian Airlines jumbo
• 2 announcements regarding issues with Cargo documentation later.... we're told we've lost our slot and will be taking-off 2 hours later than scheduled. F&CK!!! We only have 2 hours 15 to make our connection at KUL!!!
• Get us the hell out of this place.... PLEASE!!

I hereby vow to never again go through LHR. Ever, ever, ever. Even if I have a meeting in Heathrow airport sometime. I'll fly to Gatwick and go by bus.

Landed in KUL with 15 minutes to make our connection to BNE (as an aside - the flight to KUL was actually quite smooth - Aibhe slept at least 7 hours and I reckon I managed about 5 - not bad at all). So we pretty much legged it from one gate to the next, while trying to look around at what was a bloody fantastic airport, but the plane was actually being held for us......

Finally back to Brissie.... and the buggy doesn't come through - exactly what ye need at the end of the journey. Not to worry, am sure it'll turn up. No doubt its on some shuttle bus at LHR.

There endith the tales of the 2 long trips avec enfant. Fortunately for us we have a wonderful baby that doesn't appear to want to cry too much. Except in Manchester - but then again, I'd cry there too. And do something worse in LHR.