Back in October, the Shans headed for London on our first flight as a family in almost two years -- since before the first lockdown. Mrs Shan and I were very concerned about how our young daughter Gaia would react on the plane. She'd been on flights as a baby, but hadn't travelled in the air since then. A month or two previously, we'd taken her to the flying boat museum in Foynes (Limerick), where they have a life-size replica of one of the old planes that used to take off and land on water. (The musuem is definitely worth a visit if you're ever in the area.) Gaia freaked out when we tried to take her onto the stationary plane, so we were worried that she was going to scream her head off when we bustled her aboard a real, noisy, flying plane!!

Thankfully, the girl came good in the end, and was a dream on the plane -- she found it fascinating and fun, and the journey flew by in a happy blur. Phew!! (We had no worries about Dante -- he's a seasoned traveller, and had been on more flights in his first five years than I'd been on in my first twenty-five!)

The first photo was taken when we were getting ready to board the plane in Shannon. The next two were taken in Stansted, while we were waiting for the bus to take us to the car park, to pick up our hire car for the holiday.

The fourth photo was taken in our hotel in Thetford on our first night in the UK. (We went there because we wanted to visit Mrs Shan's aunt, who is a nun in an enclosed order.) In it, a delighted Dante is using a hotel prop to pretend to be John Dillermand. If you don't know who John Dillermand is... Google the name, and be prepared for an eye-opening insight into children's TV in Denmark!!!! :-) :-) :-)