Tales of Christmas #1: 'Daddy Punched Me!'

My trip North was reasonably straightforward, well apart from the passenger assistance guy who arrived into the passenger assistance lounge (repurposed corridor) at Kings Cross looking for a Mr Nolan, didn't get a response to any of several calls and finally asked "Is there anyone here for the 12:30". Me: "Yes, David Gillon". Him, looking at his printed job list, "Oh!" (Nolan, Gillon, how?!?)

 

Anyway, he got me aboard in plenty of time (I literally arrived on the platform at the same time the empty train arrived and drew up with the appropriate door right next to me) and a few minutes late a young couple arrive with c5yo and c2yo boys, and as the other wheelchair space wasn't booked, decide to use that for their pushchair and for feeding the kids purposes (most of the seats on the Azuma are airline style, but the wheelchair spaces have an actual table). "Don't worry," mum says to me as the 2yo starts fretting, "Sam'll be asleep in half an hour". Half an hour later Sam's wide awake, increasingly fractious, and they've decide he's coming down with something. It wasn't a problem for me, I could bury myself in a book, but they were kept busy. Well, mum was busy, dad was pretty useless. But a couple of times he did take him off into the vestibule at the end of the carriage to give her a tiny break. When they came back from one of those, Sam announces loudly "Daddy punched me!"
 

Dad, quietly: "Other way round, actually."

Mum: "Samuel, did you punch Daddy?"

Samuel: "'es"

Half an hour later the little shit tried it again!

Two and a half hours on from KX he's still not happy and letting everyone know it. They were going all the way up to Scotland, so had at least another couple of hours to survive when we got to my stop at Darlington. As I was gathering up my stuff the mum tried to apologise to me, which I waved off.

"Well, I should at least warn you that we're booked to come back on the 2nd" she told me, "so you know which service to avoid!"