The joys of international travel

Why is international travel never smooth?

In truth, I suppose my trip back to London yesterday was probably as good as it gets. The flight left Beirut on time, I’d just had to get up at quarter to five in the morning to be at the airport to catch it. Although an early riser by habit and inclination, that’s getting a bit much. We were only in the Heathrow “stack” for about ten minutes. Yesterday, that meant circling over Reading. That would be bad enough in itself, but seeing other planes above and below with what feel like rapid changes of speed and direction, up and down, as well as sideways, you get the impression that avoiding getting up close and personal with another sky-user is not as easy as seeing all the empty space up there would suggest. Thank you Mr. Pilot, sir.

The real issue with the flight was my fellow passenger. A nice enough chap, he was below average in size so I didn’t suffer from seat overflow problems, he didn’t take breakfast so no messy eater syndrome, he was polite but undemanding and indeed slept most of the way. “What are you complaining about then?” I here you say. Well, actually, the fellow had the most horrendous halitosis and insisted on breathing for the whole flight: how selfish can someone get? Another problem of up close and personal.

We landed slightly early, at about the same time as ten other flights, which swamped UK Border in fine style. “We’ve introduced stronger checks for your safety, so you might have to wait a little longer to get into the UK” read the notice I stood beside in the queue. Hmm, they were certainly right about that. To give them their due, they did eventually step it up to six officers for the UK/EEC passports alone, but not, I suspect, good timing if it was your first trip out of Bangladesh coming to visit your uncle in Bradford.

I found the right baggage carousel (I’ve stood at the wrong one on occasion), my suitcase popped into sight immediately (isn’t looking anxiously at the black hole disgorging bags that aren’t yours one of the most stressful bits of the whole travel experience?), customs didn’t stop me (I’ve learned to suppress sneezes going through the green channel, for fear of being thought a cocaine mule who’s just tried a sample) and the taxi queue was short and standing in sunshine.

“Where are you going, sir?” asked the taxi scheduler. I’ve learned to lie at this point and gave a false address. The truth is that my first stop is always to pick up an aging vehicle from whichever of my children has been lumbered with looking after it since my last trip. But I’ve discovered that “take me to a Red Saab in Wandsworth” doesn’t go down very well so I chat to the cabbie for a bit and then let him (why is a London cabbie nearly always a “him”) gently into the secret destination at which we arrived yesterday with hardly a hint of traffic.

And that’s where the little glitches mentioned above paled into insignificance as things really began to go awry - my old Saab’s Ministry of Transport Road Worthiness Certificate (the MOT) had run out last week!