III - Travelling with Children

We were warned. We have always travelled with our children, though. We’ve zipped them around since Oberon was a very little baby. They’ve been to France and Italy and travelled with their aunt and grandma without us. I didn’t leave my country (except occasionally to venture into England) till I was 15 and then it was only cricket and hockey tours until I was 19. It is, of course, painful travelling with children. There was one Easy Jet flight where one of them spent the entire flight going up and down, up and down, the aisle. When we sat down I was heartened that the people around us all gave us the “don’t worry, we’ve been through this” speech. I’m not sure they felt so benevolent by the end of the flight, but then again you’re hyper-sensitive as a parent and prone to horrible feelings of shame and helplessness. 

It's a common problem in churches. Most people think we must be inclusive and welcoming of children. The only way in which the Church of England will still exist in thirty years is if we manage this. But in a parish our inclusiveness comes with an army of buts:

“But I do wish parents would keep them still during [insert favourite part of service e.g. intercessions, Lord’s Prayer etc.]”

“But I do think they should go to the family service and not [insert the one that they go to e.g. evensong, early service]”

“But I do wish that the children would sit still and enjoy the service. (So do all parents!)”

And there are countless more comments. We want children at services, but we don’t want them to act like children. And I do have a great deal of sympathy for this. I love services that are quiet and still. But I also want church to be a community and that includes all sorts of disruptive people. Disruption, theologically speaking, is a kind of grace. I am content with that, but not everyone is.

Travelling with children in India is also a kind of grace. It certainly attracts a lot of attention and a lot of warmth. Unusually though, it is not they who are the source of chaos. Having on numerous occasions pulled down altar cloths with burning candles, twice broken the Nativity Jesus’ arm (through too much love rather than a lack thereof), stolen a king’s ransom of biscuits over the years and many other misdemeanours, the chaos is now all around them in the madding crowd of dusty India. And in a kind of theological justice everyone wants them to stand still for a moment while pictures are taken. And it is exhausting. Oberon has been relatively game but even he today was fed up. Apollo, who has to date mostly been the extrovert charmer of the family, has retired and refused since we arrived. Like Greta Garbo he will continue to be remembered for his early work. What we are finding more and more is that if we stop we get encircled. In public places it is people making suggestions of public transport. If we are in an attraction it is a paparazzi photo press. Today, waiting for Rhiannon to clear security at the Taj Mahal a queue quietly formed to stand around us for photos. They weren’t even asking – just coming up next to us, while friends took pictures, and throughout the day, despite being next to rightly the most photographed building in the world, they still wanted a picture of two chocolate smeared English infants.

Last year I went to a funeral at Westminster Abbey of a great man to whom I was chaplain some ten years ago, who had the enviable job of “Warden of the Cinque Ports”. I believe the post came, like many jobs, with a fine castle; but I most liked the fact that the job was part of a favourite childhood game my brothers and I used to play that was set in the fifteenth century Wars of the Roses. As I rushed in just before the service I was amused that a row of enormous cameras drew up like cannons, before quickly dropping as I came into view, an understandable disappointment. There were at least three British Prime Ministers present so I was not wounded at not topping the bill. My children, on the other hand, currently are a bewildering source of attraction, for which our apologetic Britishness is not really prepared.

But my poor children. If their rush to stardom was not enough, they also have the intimidating conversion to Indian food to manage. We are now operating a points system whereby for every new thing they try they can earn points towards “English food”! No one is yet suffering through starvation or malnutrition and they had pizza in bed tonight, which may hold off any immediate strikes. We will have to see how their reaction to accommodation progresses. We started in a suite which may have set the bar too high. “I want to go back to the big hotel”, was the cry heard today. Our present room is a tighter fit with the four of us in a bed together – this was a desperate move after our booked accommodation turned out to be unclean and unsafe. They were unsurprisingly unperturbed by such niceties.

We also took our first of many trains yesterday from Delhi to Agra. Our first train was cancelled, our second delayed by an hour leaving and 4 hours arriving. We should have made it by 3pm. We got there at 10pm. Oberon was quite happy. Children always seem to be very good at making friends given an opportunity and Oberon played for hours with a little Indian boy who’d grown up in America. The boy did eventually come to us because Oberon talked too much saying that he had to go to sleep! We arrived in fog and darkness and the predictable noise and confusion of an Indian railway station. Driving in this part of India has never seemed completely safe and I can’t say the fog greatly improved the experience. But we have got to the glory of the Mughals in Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal, which was the least disappointing monument I’ve ever seen. Tomorrow will sign off our first week of travel. We travel on again to Jaipur by train. The adventure continues.