Traveller from an antique land

My goodness, there are a lot of people in the south.

This was apparent even in the hotel this morning.

It was a Premier Inn, so it had not priced in an air of exclusivity. Breakfast included a startling jostle of people of all nationalities, most of whom had completely failed to grasp the British concept of personal space, and all of whom had six children each.

Oliver and I retreated to our table and ate as fast as we could.

The breakfast was not great.

You even had to get your own coffee.

During the course of our breakfast we were pestered by waiters wanting to tell us their names so that we would mention them in a report on TripAdvisor. I took somebody’s card, and felt terribly glad that my own sector of the tourist trade involves utter indifference to TripAdvisor. Then we packed ourselves up and set off to the terminal.

Heathrow Airport is massive. I mean massive. It is bigger than Windermere and Bowness together, and would stretch out as far as Ambleside if it were plonked down in the Lake District, which obviously it wouldn’t be, because of the lake being in the way. We drove around anxiously, trying to decipher the mysterious road signs and understand the intentions of the people who had designed the roadworks.

In the end of course we found the terminal, and if the hotel had seemed full of people, Heathrow Airport was in a league of its own. Everywhere in the south seems to be bursting with people, you can smell them everywhere. It is a sort of yeasty smell, sour and sweet all at once, and the air is heavy with it.

We ambled around feeling very unsophisticated, trying to work out the new style person-free check-in process. You touch a screen and wave your passport, and it knows exactly where you want to fly to. We gazed at it in admiration for a while, until an official looking girl, with a badge on a string, waddled over and told us that we needed to scan both passports.

We explained that we didn’t because Oliver was flying on his own, which caused her a great deal of consternation. We were hauled over to a desk with a person, where some other girls in uniforms clucked a lot, and made some concerned phone calls, before they established that actually their airline did not require that twelve year old boys needed their mummy to fly with them. They grilled Oliver about how he might find his departure gate, and once he had explained crossly that he could, and probably would, read the signs, in the end they let us go.

I will not fib, it was a scary thing to deliver him through the security gate and wave goodbye to him, and when I walked away on my own I was a bit tearful. That is a secret, do not tell anybody.

I can fill you in on the rest of Oliver’s story now, because of the wonders of modern technology.

He got to the body scanners and security gates and asked a security guard for help. The security guard was astonished to discover that a person of Oliver’s unadvanced years was travelling alone, and helpfully escorted him through the queue. Oliver was thanked him gratefully before buzzing off to spend the next hour sitting in a restaurant drinking apple juice, like a true sophisticate, before finding the departure gate and successfully making it on to the plane.

However, Lisbon was a different story.

Whilst making his way unobtrusively through Passport Control, Oliver was spotted by an officious sort of security guard who demanded to know the whereabouts of his family.

When Oliver declared himself to be a temporary orphan, the security guard was horrified. He arrested him and took him into protective custody.

He was dragged out of the passport queue and detained in a side room, where they questioned him for ages.

Oliver is unused to being imprisoned, and made up his mind to make a run for it. He shouldered his backpack and watched for opportunities. He spotted a fire door, which he surmised would probably be unlocked, and resolved to kick the security guard in the shins and make a bolt for freedom.

Rather to my disappointment, when he was telling me the story later, he did not, in the end, have to resort to these carefully planned measures, because the security staff decided that they would give him an opportunity to identify the family who were coming to meet him. They marched him to the Arrivals gate and asked if he could see them anywhere, which obviously he could, they were the ones with the other excited small boy jumping about and waving.

They made his friend’s father produce his driving licence to prove that he was indeed who he said he was, and then, rather reluctantly, released Oliver into his care.

Goodness alone knows what they would have done if the friend’s father had not been carrying identification, they could hardly have sent Oliver home again.

Of course all ended well, and Oliver is now safely in Portugal, splashing around in his friend’s swimming pool and becoming bronzed.

My day was not nearly so exciting.

The traffic was so dreadful that it took me eight and a half hours to get home from London, I did not get over forty miles an hour until I had passed Manchester. I made up for it then, if there were any speed cameras I imagine a Naughty Motorist summons will be on its way to me. If so I shall ring the providers of my recent Speed Awareness course and demand my money back, quite clearly it has not worked.

Once home I swallowed coffee and went to work, which is where I am now.

It is three o’ clock in the morning. I am a bit sick of the inside of my car.

The air smells of lake, and of sheep, and when I went into the garage, the local newspaper had a big front-page picture of Bluebird, being brilliantly piloted by Ted.

It is lovely to be home.