I had to catch the Tube yesterday morning. The London Underground. I hate the Tube. The only good thing about travelling by Tube is that it serves as a useful reminder, if I ever needed one, of why I’m glad I no longer live in London.
Everyone in London moans about the Tube. They moan about the rats. They moan about delays, even though one comes along every five minutes or so. They moan about the over-crowding. They moan about the cleanliness. Moan, moan, moan. Do these people not realise that the Tube is probably one of the most efficient, and affordable (relatively) transport systems in the country!?! You can get anywhere in London by Tube, and at virtually any time that you would want to. Back home, I have a two and half mile hike to the nearest bus stop. There is just one bus a day. And, that bus doesn’t go to anywhere that I would want to. So, London, stop bloody moaning!
That said, it is not the, most pleasurable of travel experiences, the Tube. It is invariable full. At least during rush hour it is. At the time you have to travel. You spend your journey either stooped, wedged against the door with someone’s briefcase stuck up your arse and somebody else’s elbow in your ribs. Or, you have to put up with your face in someone’s sweaty armpit or garlic-smelling face, next to an oik playing music too loud through a none-too-personal set of headphones.
On one occasion, in the morning rush hour, I did get into an almost empty carriage at Queen’s Park. It took as long as it took the doors to close behind me to realise why. My sense of smell told me. There was a tramp on board. A street person, I should probably say in these politically correct times. He was challenged in the personal odour department. He stank. It was unbearable. I got out at the next stop and moved to the next carriage, which was full, and stuck my head into the nearest armpit I could find and breathed in what seemed like fresh air by comparison.
If you are ever lucky enough to get a seat, it is invariably damp. I hate to think with what. Everyone avoids eye contact. Well, this is understandable. All of the men are secretly ogling all of the women and don’t want to be seen doing it. All of the women are avoiding eye contact with the men in case they are being ogled, or, in case they aren’t. You can always tell if there is a good-looking woman on the Tube because the men will arrange themselves around her. Strategic sitting and standing. Fortunately, there are always the adverts to stare at while avoiding eye contact. They are usually for cheap phone calls to exotic places, or for insurance, or for the holiday of a lifetime. If you are really lucky there is sometimes a quaint poem or two to pass the time.
There is of course one exception to the eye contact rule these days, unfortunately. If you happen to be male and Asian in appearance, and/or wearing a rucksack, people will stare into your very soul, trying to determine whether you are a suicide bomber. I know that this is borderline racism but it is understandable. The Irish had to put up with the same treatment for years. It must be quite unpleasant for all of the decent Asian males out there. On the bright side, I guess they often get to sit in a less than crowded carriage….
The Tube is even more horrible in the summer. Last summer when it was an unbearable 30 degrees centigrade in the open it was 50 degrees on the Underground. That's hot! They slowed everything down because of the heat. Great. The only good thing about the Tube in summer is the occasional breeze. Apparently, the human brain begins to boil at 45 degrees. I got a taxi that day.
Also, and trust me on this. Don’t travel by Tube if you’re hung over.
Showing posts with label Corporate Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Corporate Travel. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 March 2007
Monday, 22 January 2007
Planes, Trains and Automobiles Part 3
One-Armed Bandits
What is it with Rotterdam in the Netherlands and one-armed taxi drivers?
During one job with the Company I had to spend typically 3 days a week in Rotterdam. Which is a bit like spending a 3rd of your life in Stoke. Not that I have anything against Stoke in particular – it has a half decent multi-plex cinema with a popcorn design on the carpet (although I suspect that that is not deliberate but a consequence of poor cleaning and the bad manners of the local inhabitants of the Potteries) – but I wouldn’t choose to spend 3 days of my life there every week either!
And so I became a Diamond Cardholder in the local Rotterdam Hilton hotel loyalty programme. Which reminds me…….I noticed, when checking in last night, that female hotel receptionists bring out much the same reaction in me as air stewardesses. Which made me also think of a similar reaction when I was 16 or 17 and totally infatuated with the Avon lady who used to sell cosmetics to my mom at the door and flirt with me furiously. She looked great all smartly dressed and made up, and could turn this hormonal teenager into a blushing frenzy of sexual fantasy. (My dad liked her too). It is that whole uniform, make-up and sparkly smile thing. I must be spending too much time away from the missus and in the company of my own right arm! And speaking of right arms……
The Hilton is just a 10 to 15 minute walk away from the office. I always walk to the hotel when I leave the office but, because I am inherently lazy and free with the Company’s money, I always jump in a taxi outside of the hotel in the morning to go to the office. I justify this to myself that a) it gets me to work some 3 to 5 minutes earlier, b) I have luggage with me, c) I don’t want to get wet/catch cold/get sweaty while walking, and, d) I’m worth it. Actually given my lack of exercise (other than walking the length of Schiphol airport twice a week) it is probably a health and safety thing – the walk could kill me.
Invariably I get the same taxi driver. A 50 something, one-armed, ancient rocker. He looks like an escapee from a Status Quo tribute band (or Golden Earring for the Dutchies). He is not unlike Peter Stringfellow. He has long, grey flowing locks combed back so as to look wind-swept, and, to hide the bald spot on the back of his head. He listens to a Dutch radio channel that is trapped in a time warp somewhere around the beginning of the 1980s – all rock ballads and Scandinavian groups singing in bad English. And, more importantly, he has no right arm.
It actually took me quite a time to notice that he had no right arm. Well, I am not at my best first thing in the morning, especially after a typically sleepless night in a hotel. The things I have heard through hotel walls! And, oh for a hotel with a decent air conditioning system – one which actually controls the temperature without spitting, gurgling, banging, humming, and rattling all night long. Thinking about it, maybe I can just hear next door’s air conditioning through the hotel walls! No I didn’t notice his lack of limb at first because he has a poor man’s prosthetic. I say poor man’s because this is clearly nothing prescribed by the Dutch health system, which I am led to believe is quite generous with such things. This is more the kind of thing that you would expect to see on a bonfire night’s Guy. It looks as if he has stuffed his shirtsleeve with straw and attached a rubber dolls hand at the end. At first I thought he was just a bad driver – he tends to take the corners quite wide – and too surly to be bothered to help with my luggage, but then I noticed (well I work in security and am quite observant with such things) that he only ever had his left hand on the steering wheel, and, there was always a look of slight panic if his mobile phone rang while he was not on a straight bit of road.
Never mind, he has not killed me yet. Or anyone else to my knowledge.
Actually I am generally quite pleased to see him in the morning as he is one of the few drivers that accepts my request for a lift to 22 Blaak with good grace. You see, these guys often have to wait outside of the hotel for quite some time (the central railway station being within easy walking distance, even with luggage) and are rather hopeful of bigger fares, such as to the airport or to the Hague, Amsterdam, etc. My quick trip round the block is hardly worth their while. However, Mr One-Armed Rocker knows that I tip generously with the Company’s money and will get my own bags out of the boot……
Imagine my surprise, however, when I left the hotel one morning and found Mr One-Armed Rocker stood waiting with two other taxi drivers and they had just 3 arms between them? I am glad to say, however, that they did have one upper limb each (but not necessarily the same one). I think that being driven around by a guy steering with his teeth, or, Heaven forbid, his bare feet, would be too much for me in the morning.
Rotterdam must have a club for them – One-Armed Drivers R Us. Or the local council must offer special incentives to attract people with specific disabilities. Well, at least it explains why Rotterdam has traffic lights on every junction (which is bloody frustrating!) – it is to slow these guys down sufficiently so that they can never get up to killing speed when taking the next bend a little too widely!
What is it with Rotterdam in the Netherlands and one-armed taxi drivers?
During one job with the Company I had to spend typically 3 days a week in Rotterdam. Which is a bit like spending a 3rd of your life in Stoke. Not that I have anything against Stoke in particular – it has a half decent multi-plex cinema with a popcorn design on the carpet (although I suspect that that is not deliberate but a consequence of poor cleaning and the bad manners of the local inhabitants of the Potteries) – but I wouldn’t choose to spend 3 days of my life there every week either!
And so I became a Diamond Cardholder in the local Rotterdam Hilton hotel loyalty programme. Which reminds me…….I noticed, when checking in last night, that female hotel receptionists bring out much the same reaction in me as air stewardesses. Which made me also think of a similar reaction when I was 16 or 17 and totally infatuated with the Avon lady who used to sell cosmetics to my mom at the door and flirt with me furiously. She looked great all smartly dressed and made up, and could turn this hormonal teenager into a blushing frenzy of sexual fantasy. (My dad liked her too). It is that whole uniform, make-up and sparkly smile thing. I must be spending too much time away from the missus and in the company of my own right arm! And speaking of right arms……
The Hilton is just a 10 to 15 minute walk away from the office. I always walk to the hotel when I leave the office but, because I am inherently lazy and free with the Company’s money, I always jump in a taxi outside of the hotel in the morning to go to the office. I justify this to myself that a) it gets me to work some 3 to 5 minutes earlier, b) I have luggage with me, c) I don’t want to get wet/catch cold/get sweaty while walking, and, d) I’m worth it. Actually given my lack of exercise (other than walking the length of Schiphol airport twice a week) it is probably a health and safety thing – the walk could kill me.
Invariably I get the same taxi driver. A 50 something, one-armed, ancient rocker. He looks like an escapee from a Status Quo tribute band (or Golden Earring for the Dutchies). He is not unlike Peter Stringfellow. He has long, grey flowing locks combed back so as to look wind-swept, and, to hide the bald spot on the back of his head. He listens to a Dutch radio channel that is trapped in a time warp somewhere around the beginning of the 1980s – all rock ballads and Scandinavian groups singing in bad English. And, more importantly, he has no right arm.
It actually took me quite a time to notice that he had no right arm. Well, I am not at my best first thing in the morning, especially after a typically sleepless night in a hotel. The things I have heard through hotel walls! And, oh for a hotel with a decent air conditioning system – one which actually controls the temperature without spitting, gurgling, banging, humming, and rattling all night long. Thinking about it, maybe I can just hear next door’s air conditioning through the hotel walls! No I didn’t notice his lack of limb at first because he has a poor man’s prosthetic. I say poor man’s because this is clearly nothing prescribed by the Dutch health system, which I am led to believe is quite generous with such things. This is more the kind of thing that you would expect to see on a bonfire night’s Guy. It looks as if he has stuffed his shirtsleeve with straw and attached a rubber dolls hand at the end. At first I thought he was just a bad driver – he tends to take the corners quite wide – and too surly to be bothered to help with my luggage, but then I noticed (well I work in security and am quite observant with such things) that he only ever had his left hand on the steering wheel, and, there was always a look of slight panic if his mobile phone rang while he was not on a straight bit of road.
Never mind, he has not killed me yet. Or anyone else to my knowledge.
Actually I am generally quite pleased to see him in the morning as he is one of the few drivers that accepts my request for a lift to 22 Blaak with good grace. You see, these guys often have to wait outside of the hotel for quite some time (the central railway station being within easy walking distance, even with luggage) and are rather hopeful of bigger fares, such as to the airport or to the Hague, Amsterdam, etc. My quick trip round the block is hardly worth their while. However, Mr One-Armed Rocker knows that I tip generously with the Company’s money and will get my own bags out of the boot……
Imagine my surprise, however, when I left the hotel one morning and found Mr One-Armed Rocker stood waiting with two other taxi drivers and they had just 3 arms between them? I am glad to say, however, that they did have one upper limb each (but not necessarily the same one). I think that being driven around by a guy steering with his teeth, or, Heaven forbid, his bare feet, would be too much for me in the morning.
Rotterdam must have a club for them – One-Armed Drivers R Us. Or the local council must offer special incentives to attract people with specific disabilities. Well, at least it explains why Rotterdam has traffic lights on every junction (which is bloody frustrating!) – it is to slow these guys down sufficiently so that they can never get up to killing speed when taking the next bend a little too widely!
Planes, Trains and Automobiles Part 1
Corporate Travel
Business travel is not all it is cracked up to be............as my (2nd) trip to Argentina may demonstrate.
I arrived at Buenos Aires in the middle of a horrendous electrical storm. It was 8am local time and as black as night. Thunder and lightning were exploding all around us and I have never experienced turbulence like it in a big plane like that (an Air France Airbus). After 3 aborted landing attempts we were made to circle for an hour until the storm moved away from the airport, and, presumably, to waste a little fuel in case of a failed landing attempt. Which is known as crashing in non-aviator circles!. It was quite a relief to get down in the end.
The journey by taxi into the city from the airport was also quite interesting - much of the motorway and main roads on the journey were flooded and in some places quite badly.......I got my feet wet as the water was above the level of the taxi’s wheels in certain parts. At least it was warm rain…………………
Then it was work, work, work. Early starts, long days and late finishes. In fact I did not step outside of the hotel until 21.00 on the Wednesday evening - for a dinner at a nearby restaurant - and I left on Thursday.
The 13 hour trip from Buenos Aires to Paris dragged quite a bit. This was mainly due to the fact that there was an Argentinean woman sitting two rows behind me who was travelling with two kids. One, a babe in arms, would wake up every two hours and scream the place down. The other, a toddler around two years old, would run away from his mom and chase around the business class lounge, climbing all over peoples' seats. Including my seat. Which I was sat in. It was like sitting in a busy cinema while the people behind you performed Riverdance on the back of your chair. I was forced to watch Lord of the Rings dubbed in French (it is not quite the same – it makes Aragorn seem a little effeminate) on the in-flight movie channel, otherwise I would have gone completely mad and killed the little ba*tard.
So, I was feeling quite relieved, if not refreshed, when we arrived at Paris Roissy (the French deliberately like to confuse the international traveller by having 2 names for Charles de Gaulle airport) an hour ahead of schedule on the Friday morning, at 10am. My flight to Manchester was at 13.30 so I settled into the business lounge, had yet another glass of champagne to celebrate Birmingham City's triumphant rise to the Premiership, and went to the gate at 12.45 as requested to do so by the flashing green banner on the display monitors. At the gate, there was a new message: “Delayed! Delayed! Delayed!” But no other bloody information to tell you why or for how long. And no bloody staff to help either.
So, I returned to the Business Lounge of Air France where there was a growing crowd of increasingly irate Brits. Apparently, the brand-new Air Traffic control systems recently installed in the UK (by EDS of course!) had completely failed and all flights to and from the UK were cancelled until the next morning, earliest. All hotels at the airport were already full. Aaargghh! The prospect of spending the night with a bottle of champagne and SKY Business News in the business lounge was not an attractive one. The homing instant is strong in this one and so I determined to find an alternative route home.
To make things worse, they could not find my baggage either. Of course, it had been checked straight through from Argentina to Manchester. So, I was forced to abandon it at the airport. I grabbed a taxi and crawled (it was the start of a bank holiday weekend in France) across the city to the Gare Du Nord and joined the long ticket queue for the Eurostar to London. Because of redevelopment in the station, there was no lounge at the Gare Du Nord, so I was forced to lean against a wall for an hour or so before boarding the train. I must have begun to smell pretty badly by now, so at least my personal space was preserved.
The train was absolutely packed ......and late. They had been flooded with stranded would-be plane travellers desperate to get back to the UK. It took 45 minutes to get everyone on board instead of the usual 15 minutes.
This journey was also “interesting” due to the fact that I found myself sat across from an obsessive compulisve with a drinking problem. He was probably thinking the same about me. Whenever a member of staff passed by he insisted on getting another drink of champagne. He would then go through this very, very strange ritual as part of the drinking process. This involved ensuring that the glass was dead in the centre of the table; turning it anti-clockwise 12 times; drinking it two-handed in 7 swallows; cleaning the inside of the glass with his tongue; and, then turning the glass upside down and peering into it for 5 minutes, turning it around 4 times, clockwise, to make sure that it was empty. I joke not. He was either obsessive compulsive or the couple of aspirin I had taken earlier to prevent the onset of deep vein thrombosis on the flight from Argentina were beginning to mix with my champagne and fatigue with some very strange side effects.
And so I arrived in Waterloo in London.....took a tube to Euston........stood around for a while before getting a train to Crewe.....where I arrived, on time, at 22.30 and so home...............to bed. Total travelling time 27 hours 30 minutes. My baggage travelled for an additional 36 hours, finally arriving Sunday evening!
Possibly my worst trip, however, was to the Isle of Bute in Scotland. We had arranged to spend a long weekend there, at a Landmark Trust property, with friends from London. They were flying up to Glasgow on the Friday and picking up a hire car for the short journey by road and ferry to Bute. We, however, were planning to drive up on the Friday from our home in Cheshire – an 8 hour drive. And, as we had arranged the trip we were keen to be first at the property to check it out and make it warm and welcoming for our friends. This meant that we would have to be on the road by something like 8am.
I was a little miffed (to say the least), therefore, when my boss “summoned” me to a 2 hour meeting in Rotterdam on the Thursday afternoon. This was in the days when direct flights between Manchester and Rotterdam had ceased so the journey consisted of a flight to Amsterdam and a 45 minute train journey to Rotterdam, and the same in reverse. If my meeting finished on time I was to fly out of Schiphol around 7pm and be home for 8pm UK time Thursday night.
It was not to be. I remember complaining to my driver on the way to the airport – one of my privileges of rank is that I get an executive car service between home and the airport – moaning about my summons and the fact that I would have a long drive ahead of me on the Friday morning.
My flight out was, unusually, on time. My connection with the train (they run every 30 minutes) was also on time, as was the train itself. They are very efficient these Dutchies. (Mussolini would have been proud of them). And so, I arrived in the office around 11.30 local time. I then kicked my heels for a couple of hours and tried to look busy until my meeting at 2pm.
At 2pm I went into the meeting room and greeted my colleagues. “Not flying out tonight are you?” asked one of my teammates. “Yes”, I replied. “I have a day off tomorrow and am going to Scotland.” “Not flying from Schiphol I hope?” he replied. “Yes. Why?”. “Because there has been a fire at Schiphol and the airport is closed.”
At this point I left the meeting. I left the meeting that I had not wanted to attend before it had begun. I told my boss that I had to sort my travel arrangements as I had to be back home this evening otherwise all plans for the weekend would have been ruined and my wife would be, well, less than happy.
I phoned our travel department and asked them if they could transfer me to flights leaving from Rotterdam with a connection in City Airport, London. “All flights from Rotterdam are booked, Sir. There has been a fire at Schiphol!”. I explained that I knew about the fire and that I really needed to get home that evening. I enquired how likely it was that the airport would be open by the time my flight was due to leave. “It is unlikely, Sir. It was a very serious fire.” Apparently the Burger King in the main concourse had set alight. If you have ever experienced Dutch cuisine you would understand what a terrible calamity this indeed was. So, I enquired of my other travel options…..
My way home that day involved getting from the office to Rotterdam Central train station. I accomplished this by tram with no difficulty. I then had to get the international train from Rotterdam to Brussels, being the capital of Belgium, being the neighbouring bloody country. I accomplished this with no difficulty.
At Brussels airport the nice people at British Airways took pity on me and upgraded me to business class. This meant I had access to the business lounge, free alcohol, a British newspaper, and, free snacks – sandwiches, olives, peanuts, cherry tomatoes, processed cheese, popcorn and the like. This was great as I had been booked on the 8pm flight from Brussels (which meant I should be home at 9pm UK time – just one hour later than planned) to Manchester and I had 3 hours to kill.
I used part of this time to leave voicemail messages for Cathy, my wife, who was out at work. The messages were along the lines of “You’ll never guess what has happened but don’t worry I’ll be back tonight”. I read a paper, did the crossword (this was in the days before Soduko), sipped my drinks, nibbled my nuts (!) and sent a few emails before sauntering to the gate at the prescribed time.
At the gate I found my fellow would-be passengers………and no staff. This is never a good sign. Nor did I see good signs on looking out of the window (the BA Lounge at Brussels airport has no windows). It was foggy. It was very foggy. It was so foggy that you could not see further than the windows themselves. We waited a while. As we waited the departure board began to flash “cancelled” alongside various flights with all too alarming a frequency. Eventually, a member of BA staff came to the gate and explained that the fog was set to stay and that it was likely that the airport would close. Our flight, however, had not yet been cancelled so we were not in a position to transfer to other flights with spaces that were expected to leave, nor did we qualify for free overnight stays in an airport hotel, nor could they guarantee a first flight out in the morning. Sh*t!. I felt my weekend and my marriage disappearing……
I didn’t care about money – the Company would pay. I just had to get home. So, I went to try and book an alternative flight. There were none. There were no flights going anywhere. The airport was closed. The first available flight out in the morning was not before 09.30 which meant that I would not be in time to make it to drive to Bute so my only alternative would be for Cathy to drive herself, and for me to fly to Glasgow. Cathy would not be happy. I was not bloody happy. Especially as all the airport hotels were already full! Passengers were beginning to jostle for space on benches……..
And then a glimmer of hope…….apparently our incoming flight was still circling. Apparently, our flight had a Manchester-based crew on board and they too were keen to get home tonight. They were circling in the hope that the weather would improve to enable them to land and whisk us back home to hearth and loved ones.
By 11pm the weather had not improved, the airport was closed and our plane had been diverted to Ostende. Fortunately, our plane was full of businessmen desperate to get home and sporting BA Gold Cards. I, being a KLM frequenter merely had a BA Blue Card which was next to useless. These Gold Card types were complaining vociferously and threatening all kinds of things as only pompous, self-important British businessmen can. Eventually, it was decided to send us to Ostende. Within the hour a couple of coaches were found and we began the hour or so journey by road to Ostende. I spent most of the journey making calming calls to Cathy and checking out alternatives such as the Ostende ferry….just in case.
We cleared the fog. We arrived at the airport. We could see the plane on the tarmac. We left the coaches. The coaches left. We entered the airport. The airport was empty. There was not a soul to be found. The Gold Card Customer Service desk again suffered verbal abuse until they actually made radio contact with the Captain of the plane. The Captain of the plane managed to locate some airport staff and we eventually found ourselves on board. Eventually they found someone to de-ice the plane’s wings and we were able to take off. I spent most of the journey worrying whether taxis still operated from Manchester airport at that time in the morning or would I be stranded or, worse, have to call the wife out…..as I was sure that my exec car would have been cancelled.
We landed at Manchester at 2.30 am. The airport should have been closed at this time so I hate to think what fines BA had incurred to bring us home. As I walked through the gates into arrivals I was more than a little thrilled to see Ian, my exec car driver standing there, waiting for me. I was not so thrilled to see he was chuckling, none too quietly, to himself. I mentioned nightmare journeys, airport fires, wiping grins off faces and other such expletives. He apologised and explained. What I didn’t know was that within an hour of my call to the travel department, Schiphol airport in Amsterdam had reopened. Yes, there was a backlog of flights but my original flight home only suffered an hour delay. If I had just ignored the travel department’s advice and proceeded as planned, I would have landed five and a half hours earlier !! Ian had known of my weekend away and taken pity on me. He took me home.
And so, just one tram, one train, one coach, one plane, one car and three different countries later I crawled into my bed. Just six hours later we hit the road. We got to Bute on time. Our friends were late and grumbling about the one hour delay they had suffered on route - Easyjet. Travel virgins!. We had a great time! Thanks Ian.
Business travel is not all it is cracked up to be............as my (2nd) trip to Argentina may demonstrate.
I arrived at Buenos Aires in the middle of a horrendous electrical storm. It was 8am local time and as black as night. Thunder and lightning were exploding all around us and I have never experienced turbulence like it in a big plane like that (an Air France Airbus). After 3 aborted landing attempts we were made to circle for an hour until the storm moved away from the airport, and, presumably, to waste a little fuel in case of a failed landing attempt. Which is known as crashing in non-aviator circles!. It was quite a relief to get down in the end.
The journey by taxi into the city from the airport was also quite interesting - much of the motorway and main roads on the journey were flooded and in some places quite badly.......I got my feet wet as the water was above the level of the taxi’s wheels in certain parts. At least it was warm rain…………………
Then it was work, work, work. Early starts, long days and late finishes. In fact I did not step outside of the hotel until 21.00 on the Wednesday evening - for a dinner at a nearby restaurant - and I left on Thursday.
The 13 hour trip from Buenos Aires to Paris dragged quite a bit. This was mainly due to the fact that there was an Argentinean woman sitting two rows behind me who was travelling with two kids. One, a babe in arms, would wake up every two hours and scream the place down. The other, a toddler around two years old, would run away from his mom and chase around the business class lounge, climbing all over peoples' seats. Including my seat. Which I was sat in. It was like sitting in a busy cinema while the people behind you performed Riverdance on the back of your chair. I was forced to watch Lord of the Rings dubbed in French (it is not quite the same – it makes Aragorn seem a little effeminate) on the in-flight movie channel, otherwise I would have gone completely mad and killed the little ba*tard.
So, I was feeling quite relieved, if not refreshed, when we arrived at Paris Roissy (the French deliberately like to confuse the international traveller by having 2 names for Charles de Gaulle airport) an hour ahead of schedule on the Friday morning, at 10am. My flight to Manchester was at 13.30 so I settled into the business lounge, had yet another glass of champagne to celebrate Birmingham City's triumphant rise to the Premiership, and went to the gate at 12.45 as requested to do so by the flashing green banner on the display monitors. At the gate, there was a new message: “Delayed! Delayed! Delayed!” But no other bloody information to tell you why or for how long. And no bloody staff to help either.
So, I returned to the Business Lounge of Air France where there was a growing crowd of increasingly irate Brits. Apparently, the brand-new Air Traffic control systems recently installed in the UK (by EDS of course!) had completely failed and all flights to and from the UK were cancelled until the next morning, earliest. All hotels at the airport were already full. Aaargghh! The prospect of spending the night with a bottle of champagne and SKY Business News in the business lounge was not an attractive one. The homing instant is strong in this one and so I determined to find an alternative route home.
To make things worse, they could not find my baggage either. Of course, it had been checked straight through from Argentina to Manchester. So, I was forced to abandon it at the airport. I grabbed a taxi and crawled (it was the start of a bank holiday weekend in France) across the city to the Gare Du Nord and joined the long ticket queue for the Eurostar to London. Because of redevelopment in the station, there was no lounge at the Gare Du Nord, so I was forced to lean against a wall for an hour or so before boarding the train. I must have begun to smell pretty badly by now, so at least my personal space was preserved.
The train was absolutely packed ......and late. They had been flooded with stranded would-be plane travellers desperate to get back to the UK. It took 45 minutes to get everyone on board instead of the usual 15 minutes.
This journey was also “interesting” due to the fact that I found myself sat across from an obsessive compulisve with a drinking problem. He was probably thinking the same about me. Whenever a member of staff passed by he insisted on getting another drink of champagne. He would then go through this very, very strange ritual as part of the drinking process. This involved ensuring that the glass was dead in the centre of the table; turning it anti-clockwise 12 times; drinking it two-handed in 7 swallows; cleaning the inside of the glass with his tongue; and, then turning the glass upside down and peering into it for 5 minutes, turning it around 4 times, clockwise, to make sure that it was empty. I joke not. He was either obsessive compulsive or the couple of aspirin I had taken earlier to prevent the onset of deep vein thrombosis on the flight from Argentina were beginning to mix with my champagne and fatigue with some very strange side effects.
And so I arrived in Waterloo in London.....took a tube to Euston........stood around for a while before getting a train to Crewe.....where I arrived, on time, at 22.30 and so home...............to bed. Total travelling time 27 hours 30 minutes. My baggage travelled for an additional 36 hours, finally arriving Sunday evening!
Possibly my worst trip, however, was to the Isle of Bute in Scotland. We had arranged to spend a long weekend there, at a Landmark Trust property, with friends from London. They were flying up to Glasgow on the Friday and picking up a hire car for the short journey by road and ferry to Bute. We, however, were planning to drive up on the Friday from our home in Cheshire – an 8 hour drive. And, as we had arranged the trip we were keen to be first at the property to check it out and make it warm and welcoming for our friends. This meant that we would have to be on the road by something like 8am.
I was a little miffed (to say the least), therefore, when my boss “summoned” me to a 2 hour meeting in Rotterdam on the Thursday afternoon. This was in the days when direct flights between Manchester and Rotterdam had ceased so the journey consisted of a flight to Amsterdam and a 45 minute train journey to Rotterdam, and the same in reverse. If my meeting finished on time I was to fly out of Schiphol around 7pm and be home for 8pm UK time Thursday night.
It was not to be. I remember complaining to my driver on the way to the airport – one of my privileges of rank is that I get an executive car service between home and the airport – moaning about my summons and the fact that I would have a long drive ahead of me on the Friday morning.
My flight out was, unusually, on time. My connection with the train (they run every 30 minutes) was also on time, as was the train itself. They are very efficient these Dutchies. (Mussolini would have been proud of them). And so, I arrived in the office around 11.30 local time. I then kicked my heels for a couple of hours and tried to look busy until my meeting at 2pm.
At 2pm I went into the meeting room and greeted my colleagues. “Not flying out tonight are you?” asked one of my teammates. “Yes”, I replied. “I have a day off tomorrow and am going to Scotland.” “Not flying from Schiphol I hope?” he replied. “Yes. Why?”. “Because there has been a fire at Schiphol and the airport is closed.”
At this point I left the meeting. I left the meeting that I had not wanted to attend before it had begun. I told my boss that I had to sort my travel arrangements as I had to be back home this evening otherwise all plans for the weekend would have been ruined and my wife would be, well, less than happy.
I phoned our travel department and asked them if they could transfer me to flights leaving from Rotterdam with a connection in City Airport, London. “All flights from Rotterdam are booked, Sir. There has been a fire at Schiphol!”. I explained that I knew about the fire and that I really needed to get home that evening. I enquired how likely it was that the airport would be open by the time my flight was due to leave. “It is unlikely, Sir. It was a very serious fire.” Apparently the Burger King in the main concourse had set alight. If you have ever experienced Dutch cuisine you would understand what a terrible calamity this indeed was. So, I enquired of my other travel options…..
My way home that day involved getting from the office to Rotterdam Central train station. I accomplished this by tram with no difficulty. I then had to get the international train from Rotterdam to Brussels, being the capital of Belgium, being the neighbouring bloody country. I accomplished this with no difficulty.
At Brussels airport the nice people at British Airways took pity on me and upgraded me to business class. This meant I had access to the business lounge, free alcohol, a British newspaper, and, free snacks – sandwiches, olives, peanuts, cherry tomatoes, processed cheese, popcorn and the like. This was great as I had been booked on the 8pm flight from Brussels (which meant I should be home at 9pm UK time – just one hour later than planned) to Manchester and I had 3 hours to kill.
I used part of this time to leave voicemail messages for Cathy, my wife, who was out at work. The messages were along the lines of “You’ll never guess what has happened but don’t worry I’ll be back tonight”. I read a paper, did the crossword (this was in the days before Soduko), sipped my drinks, nibbled my nuts (!) and sent a few emails before sauntering to the gate at the prescribed time.
At the gate I found my fellow would-be passengers………and no staff. This is never a good sign. Nor did I see good signs on looking out of the window (the BA Lounge at Brussels airport has no windows). It was foggy. It was very foggy. It was so foggy that you could not see further than the windows themselves. We waited a while. As we waited the departure board began to flash “cancelled” alongside various flights with all too alarming a frequency. Eventually, a member of BA staff came to the gate and explained that the fog was set to stay and that it was likely that the airport would close. Our flight, however, had not yet been cancelled so we were not in a position to transfer to other flights with spaces that were expected to leave, nor did we qualify for free overnight stays in an airport hotel, nor could they guarantee a first flight out in the morning. Sh*t!. I felt my weekend and my marriage disappearing……
I didn’t care about money – the Company would pay. I just had to get home. So, I went to try and book an alternative flight. There were none. There were no flights going anywhere. The airport was closed. The first available flight out in the morning was not before 09.30 which meant that I would not be in time to make it to drive to Bute so my only alternative would be for Cathy to drive herself, and for me to fly to Glasgow. Cathy would not be happy. I was not bloody happy. Especially as all the airport hotels were already full! Passengers were beginning to jostle for space on benches……..
And then a glimmer of hope…….apparently our incoming flight was still circling. Apparently, our flight had a Manchester-based crew on board and they too were keen to get home tonight. They were circling in the hope that the weather would improve to enable them to land and whisk us back home to hearth and loved ones.
By 11pm the weather had not improved, the airport was closed and our plane had been diverted to Ostende. Fortunately, our plane was full of businessmen desperate to get home and sporting BA Gold Cards. I, being a KLM frequenter merely had a BA Blue Card which was next to useless. These Gold Card types were complaining vociferously and threatening all kinds of things as only pompous, self-important British businessmen can. Eventually, it was decided to send us to Ostende. Within the hour a couple of coaches were found and we began the hour or so journey by road to Ostende. I spent most of the journey making calming calls to Cathy and checking out alternatives such as the Ostende ferry….just in case.
We cleared the fog. We arrived at the airport. We could see the plane on the tarmac. We left the coaches. The coaches left. We entered the airport. The airport was empty. There was not a soul to be found. The Gold Card Customer Service desk again suffered verbal abuse until they actually made radio contact with the Captain of the plane. The Captain of the plane managed to locate some airport staff and we eventually found ourselves on board. Eventually they found someone to de-ice the plane’s wings and we were able to take off. I spent most of the journey worrying whether taxis still operated from Manchester airport at that time in the morning or would I be stranded or, worse, have to call the wife out…..as I was sure that my exec car would have been cancelled.
We landed at Manchester at 2.30 am. The airport should have been closed at this time so I hate to think what fines BA had incurred to bring us home. As I walked through the gates into arrivals I was more than a little thrilled to see Ian, my exec car driver standing there, waiting for me. I was not so thrilled to see he was chuckling, none too quietly, to himself. I mentioned nightmare journeys, airport fires, wiping grins off faces and other such expletives. He apologised and explained. What I didn’t know was that within an hour of my call to the travel department, Schiphol airport in Amsterdam had reopened. Yes, there was a backlog of flights but my original flight home only suffered an hour delay. If I had just ignored the travel department’s advice and proceeded as planned, I would have landed five and a half hours earlier !! Ian had known of my weekend away and taken pity on me. He took me home.
And so, just one tram, one train, one coach, one plane, one car and three different countries later I crawled into my bed. Just six hours later we hit the road. We got to Bute on time. Our friends were late and grumbling about the one hour delay they had suffered on route - Easyjet. Travel virgins!. We had a great time! Thanks Ian.
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