Missed Connections

The thing about self-check-in is that you have no one to blame but yourself. If someone else has allocated you a seat and you end up in amongst 25, 16 year old Italian kids, then you can curse the bastard who checked you in. That offers you some comforting catharsis while the throng are talking excitedly and loudly around you. But if you've chosen that seat yourself then there's nothing to comfort you when kids are passing sweets back and forth across your body and over your head like you just didn't exist. 25 Italians would have been bad enough if we were on time and I was likely to make my tight connection but seeing as we were running 45 minutes late and were still sat on the Heathrow runway going nowhere, I was ticking like a time bomb - it might only have taken one dropped Haribo for me to have a “Falling Down” moment. But of course I was far too British to say anything, so I just sent a load of passive aggressive stares in the offenders’ directions and managed to keep a lid on my own personal volcano. But I arrived in Frankfurt with a banging headache and a long old wait ahead of me. 

I wonder when I started wearing my rose-tinted spectacles, I wonder when I started thinking things were better in the old days, and I wonder if they really were. I seem to remember when flights were delayed in the good old days the airline staff could not apologise enough. But companies certainly never say sorry these days, not real apologies anyway. They mumble their apologies in a half-hearted fashion like a child being forced to apologise to his brother when he is convinced of his innocence. So that's what I got from Lufthansa - they may as well have said.
'It's so unfair why do I have to say sorry, Sorry, there I said it can I have the TV back on now.' But on the bright side they gave me a 10 euro token to spend on food and at least I would be on the same flight as my luggage this time - or so I hoped.

Now anyone who has ever travelled anywhere in the past 10 years will know that airports are now places that think it is reasonable to charge 3 pounds for a bottle of water. So the ten euro token was about as useful as a frog with a trombone. Anyway I was hungry and had time to kill so I went to the restaurant that looked the most promising just so I could be the most disappointed and true to form I was. I ate a wooden burger half paid for by Lufthansa while being patronised by over-attentive waitresses who seem to be auditioning for a role in “TGI Friday the movie”. It was the kind of place where they ask you repeatedly if everything is okay, but really don’t expect to hear the word no. This was my conversation with some poor, unsuspecting waitress.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Do you mean the food or life?’

‘Um,’ she looked uncertain now, a little confused. ‘the food?’

‘It was okay?’

I think she now thought that out of politeness she should now enquire about life.

‘It stinks’ I said with a grumpy snarl.

They left me alone after that.

Prague airport, home. I’d eventually arrived some 16 hours after I departed from Newport, South Wales, but had my luggage? As is well documented elsewhere my luggage and I are not on the best of terms. My suitcase is a maverick, a free spirit who loves to explore foreign climes; recently spending extra time in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Istanbul.  So how about this time? Was it tired and achy and longing for its home like its owner, or was it off in search of adventure? The conveyor belt sprang into life and almost immediately bags started to appear, I watched with a mixture of hope that the impossible had happened and resigned acceptance that my suitcase would not have made it to Prague. Quite a throng had formed around the conveyor belt now and bags were coming two a penny. Why do people wrap their luggage in cling film? It costs a near fortune and I always wonder how you get it off when you reach your destination. Scissors I hear you say, well you aren’t allowed scissors in your hand luggage, so what then? Anyway as I was thinking that I noticed the throng was thinning out and there was still no sign of my bag. There were just four of us left now, all bleary eyed, all desperate to go home or to our hotels. There hadn’t been a new case on the conveyor for a good two minutes, surely not.  Then the carousel gave one last shudder, one last cough and threw up 4 more bags amongst them my tired, battered, black suitcase I’d never been so pleased to see an inanimate object in all my life. I gave it a little pat and a smile and wandered off to find myself a taxi.