I've made a true discovery in the field of far-flung travel. It's called Dycem (dycem.com), and it's a wonderful material that makes anything stick to it. It's cheap, comes in all sorts of ready-made shapes or in a long roll, and defies gravity with its non-slip qualities.
It makes babies' bums stick miraculously to the seats of the most slippy highchair. Place a small circular disc of it under a toddler's cup on the tray in front of your plane seat, and the Ribena won't spill however bumpy the ride. Put a sheet of it on the tray of your kid's car seat in the hired Fiat, and you won't have to keep leaning awkwardly back at every traffic light, retrieving fallen toys. Even jigsaws can be confidently completed on top of a layer of Dycem. Whenever we're all on the move, I make sure to tuck several pieces in my hand luggage.
I was encouraged to write this because I know you all respond to a good solid tip more than anything else. It makes my day, too, if I feel I've learnt something from another parent that I didn't know before breakfast.
But just because I write a weekly column, some people think I know it all in the travel field. Even my very own brother has been pestering me about where he should go with his girlfriend, who is six months pregnant.
They want to have, in his words, "the last adult break before the baby arrives". Where is the most grown-up place they can go, where no one aged under-18 would ever want to tread? What should the two of them fly off to do before they are three? Of course, being heavily pregnant excludes the climbing Mount Kilimanjaro option. So what is left apart from spending an overlong weekend in a luxury hotel?
I'm certain one of you who has already become a parent knows.
