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11:01am on Friday, 12th July, 2024:
Anecdote
My wife had some reservations about our flight to Barcelona, as she didn't think it left much leeway in case of delays. A couple of weeks ago she'd tried to change to an earlier flight, but was told that she couldn't because the flight we'd booked was within acceptable parameters and the ticket was non-refundable.
When we arrived at Gatwick yesterday we could see from the aircraft tracking app my wife has that our flight was running 20 minutes late. It eventually took off an hour and fifteen minutes late. When we arrived in Barcelona, we had to wait three quarters of an hour before they let us off the plane as there was a shortage of buses to take us to the terminal. It took half an hour to get through passport control because of the queues, during which my wife phoned the emergency number we'd been given to find out what we needed to do to make it to the ship on time. The answer was basically "panic".
Instead of emerging from passport control at perhaps 12:20, we emerged at 14:20. Still, we didn't have to be at the port until 16:00 at the latest and it turned out that the cruise company had reps awaiitng. They made us hang about for fifteen minutes then took us to a coach.
We boarded the coach and sat on it for another half an hour or so for no apparent reason.
The rep told us that the trip to the port would take half an hour. We didn't believe her.
We were right not to believe her. It took an hour and ten minutes. My wife had the same demeanour that she has when England have missed a penalty and the opposition only needs to score their next shot to win the game.
We and the other 30 or so people on the coach had arrived fifteen minutes late. We'd been told that the people checking us in would stop an hour before we sailed, and that we would sail at 17:00 regardless.
The people checking us in were not surprised we were late and getting through wasn't a problem.
The ship eventually sailed at 18:00.
My wife was still somewhat anxious, as by 18:30 our suitcase hadn't arrived. Well, one had but the other, bigger one, hadn't. It eventually showed up, minus the strap, at 19:30.
If we didn't want a relaxing holiday before, we certainly do now.
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Copyright © 2024 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).