It
seemed rather odd without the big dogs on the bed last night. I got up, and as
I reached over to unplug my phone from its charger so I felt something rip in
my back. I actually screamed out loud… that was handy just when I was about to
go on holiday. So… faced with sulking or getting on with it, I got on with it.
Pausing
only briefly to get stuck in a traffic jam I fetched “Daddy’s Little Angel TM”.
As we drove home we got the news that the puppies had eaten a hole in one of
the net curtain so that they could see out of the window. Bless them.
With
our house-sitter ensconced, Kirsty drove four of us up to the airport. Did you
know that you have to pay to drop people in the drop-off zone now? It’s only a
fiver, but when you think how many people drop off and pick up there every day,
it’s a nice little earner for someone.
As
per the instructions we got to Gatwick far too early, but we’d planned for
this. We’d got tickets for the VIP departure lounge. It was forty quid each
which sounds a lot, but there’s as much food as you can eat, as much as you can
drink (decent stuff too) and unlike the rest of the airport it isn’t
stupidly crowded.
We
started off with champagne (which is never anything special), two
bottles of Meantime IPA, and a gin & tonic. As I was waiting for one of our
rounds of drinks so one of the normal people was being asked which type of
lager he wanted. “Anything” he said, “… Jack Daniels will do”. He
was serious thinking that Jack Daniels was a type of lager. I tried not to
laugh out loud.
The
only thing which marred the departure lounge was the lack of air conditioning
and the lack of any information boards saying when flights were going.
We got on the plane; the flight was like all flights. Hours of utter boredom interspersed by moments of stark panic at take-off, landing and during turbulence. To be honest it was rather dull, and being served (perhaps) the worst bacon roll I have ever had did little to break the monotony.
We
landed in Gran Canaria where the airport was (quite frankly) an utter
shambles, The trouble with airports the world over is that there is no one institution
which is “the airport”. There are several businesses and government
bodies all working utterly independently of each other, and often at odds with
each other.
The
biometric face scanning machine simply didn’t work, and after several failures
was abandoned in favour of some bloke actually looking at our passports (like
it used to be back in the day).
We
then waited an age for our luggage, and on hearing that there would be a major
delay getting the coach to the airport (whilst we waited for a plane from
Newcastle) we took a taxi to the hotel.
Food
had been laid out for late arrivals, and we scoffed ours whilst the family from
hell shrieked at each other in thick Scouse accents. Having scoffed we left the
scousers shrieking at each other and had a wander round the hotel. We unpacked
at midnight, and I got into bed at quarter past one, leaving “er indoors TM”
fighting with her phone. Eventually it turned out that the solution to her problem
was to turn on the “roaming data” option like I’d said all along… I
thought better of saying “told you so”.
I
took a few photos as I went there and there today. Travelling is hard work…
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