Walking with Dinosaurs…

…flying into the wind.

I always love flying with my cello. There’s never any shortage of conversation, as every Tom, Dick, Harry or Mabel feels compeled to talk to you about their cousin Frank who once played the cello… or was it the clarinet… maybe the Kazoo. He was an Aquarius you know.

Somehow I always end up near a family with small children, and the flight to Norway was no exception. In front of me I had Tarquin and Camilla (aged 10 and 8 2/3’s respectively). That’s at least what I can only assume their names to be, as they were insisting on calling each other ‘Muggle’ and ‘Ruggle’. They were sitting in a row with ‘the old lady‘ from Radio 2’s Steve Wright show who I presume, despite the ‘cock-a-ney’ jarring with their own RP, must have been the Mug and Rug’s grandmother. Dad was staying well out of it on the other side of the plane, embroiled in a book on Civil Wars in Africa – clearly an ‘Amazon Recommends’ purchase – and it quickly became apparent why.

Tarquinn: You’re such a lesbian
Camilla: Thanks. You’ve got bad hair.

*Brief pause for thought and a sip of a weak squash drink*

Tarquinn: I get sooo claustraphobic. Shut the blind… No really. I’m gonna die. We’re all gonna die. The plane’s crashing. Have we started moving yet?
Camilla (In weary school mistress voice): You’re not claus-tro-phobic.

I then chatted with the very lovely lady, Emma as I discovered, sat next to me on the plane (stupid BA seating policy – “British Airways – meet new people and make new friends so we can save time and money by separating you from your companions”). Emma, as it turned out, was a professional dancer with Oslo Opera, and a fellow former dweller of the Caerdydd, but even she wasn’t ready for the children, who clearly had been formed from a Rhoald Dahl story, who began a Rough Guide-style critique of Oslo from the air:

Tarquinn: Is that it? It’s a bit sparse. (Daddy’s choice to educate privately was clearly paying dividends with the vocabulary there)
Camilla: There’s nothing there. Just a few wooden houses and trees.
*Muffled snorts and giggles from myself, Emma andjust about everyone within earshot*
Tarquinn: Are we crashing? We’re going down too fast! I’m claustrophobic…

So there you have it: Oslo, officially ‘a bit sparse’, hoping to be twinned with Slough (or Swindon as a second choice) some time near 2012.