Seats to London from Istanbul during the last week of August, (the week before the start of the school term) are like gold dust. I booked the very last available seat and that explained the cost of my super expensive, super economy seat on Turkish Airlines.

My only luxury was managing to pre-book an aisle seat on my phone internet. If you've tried doing that with a Blackberry screen you know how impossible a task it is. Every bump in the road had me sitting all over the planes map.

My valuable aisle seat, was next to a new mother with a sleeping three month old baby.

The mother was quiet helpless / useless. She didn't know how to use a seat belt, let alone a baby belt and I had to help with both. All of which was fine.

Not so fine, came an hour into the flight. The baby CLEARLY needed a nappy change.

The lady asked if she could use my tray table.

I don't know how it happened, I think my Spidey Senses may have been dulled from the previous nights Raki challenges, so slightly confused and compliant I moved my things off my table.

She put her own tray table down, put a blanket over both my and her tray table, and then lay the baby down and proceeded to change the baby's nappy in front of me.

The Lord is merciful, I didn't get the toxic end.

To add insult to injury, the baby seemed to find my face particularly amusing and continually laughed and smiled whenever it looked at me. Later in the flight when the baby became ratty, the mother kept pointing to my face hoping the baby would be cheered up.

Unfortunately it worked.

By the end of the flight I had a queue of mothers bringing their sobbing, snivelling toddlers to be cheered up by looking at me. Everyone left the flight happy except me, and the cleaner who will find an unbagged nappy under seat 7B.