Whenever I travel alone, I feel instantly like a dressing-gowned Bill Murray wandering disconnected and dead-pan through a bizarre Pan's Labyrinth of odd coincidences and semi-believable goings on.
Which is odd, because whenever I'm with anyone else, life tends to drift by at the speed of a lazy river, and I'm either placid and serene, or leaping with inanities and fun.
But this is a story of the former variety: one in which things have happened to me, and I have steadfastly refused to bat an eyelid through the whole, deeply-eyebrow-raising affair. It begins thus:
My flight to Boston for a two-day conference, for which 6 nights in a swish hotel had been booked by my absurdly generous research project, was scheduled for 12.30 on Saturday afternoon. I was delighted with the booking, blithely using words such as "civilised" and "appropriate" to describe the non-RyanAir style departure time.
I was pushing the casual arrival thing a little far when I arrived at Terminal 3 at 11.40, but was concerned to see that the flight I was booked on was reading "Scheduled to leave at 08.30" on the slow-scrolling departure screen. I couldn't divine whether this meant that it had left at 8.30 that morning, or that it wasn't going to be leaving until 8.30 tomorrow morning. Either way, the traditional racing pulse, that accompanies a realisation that, in my slow-paced flaneuring, I've actually fallen genuinely foul of deadline which can't be talked around, accompanied my hurried visit to an Air Canada representative.
It turns out that the sign had meant to say "Scheduled to leave at 20.30". (I enjoyed the thought that some well-meaning operator had gone to the trouble of adding a zero to the start of the time on the screen, hoping to make things look more official, but actually giving a definite indicator that this was to be read as a 24-hour clock system time.) The friendly woman behind the desk said that I could either take a couple of meal vouchers, and enjoy LHR for the next eight hours, or that I could take a "day room" at Air Canada's expense. Thinking of the kind of 'day cabins' you get on cross-channel ferries (little more than prison cells with the locks operable from the inside) I asked what facilities precisely were being offered. It was in fact a room at a Holiday Inn just round the corner. She phoned and was told that because the flight 'would have already closed' by the time the phone call was being made, there would be no day room avaialble after all. I glumly accepted my meal vouchers and began trying to imagine eight hours of terminal unwellness. I took the precaution of asking to speak to a manager, just in case they were able to turn the seemingly arbitrary decision around. After around nine seconds of telling him what had happened, he disappeared into his office and returned brandishing a day room pass. So I, triumphant, left the concourse of Heathrow for the imagined golf courses of complimentary hotel living. The reality was significantly less impressive and I spent a deeply bored six hours reading my Margaret Atwood, listening to the radio and eating complimentary, but close to inedible, pub-style fish and chips in the hotel 'brasserie'.
Finally the flight was boarding and I was told that, although we'd all missed our various connections out of Halifax (where's that I hear you ask? I didn't know either. Canada, apparently), there would be a representative of Air Canada to meet us off the plane and smooth our troubled ways to Boston with complimentaries, apologies and rebooked flights.
When we arrive in Halifax at around 2.30 in the morning London time, the Air Canada representative chosen was a lone guy in a baseball cap, surrounded by anxious travellers with tired children, all trying to get an answer where none was forthcoming. He had tickets for a shuttle bus, and nights in a nearby hotel to give out. As for the connecting flight to Boston: Give 'em a call, he said, they'll sort you out.
We arrived at our hotel, this one far plusher than the London effort, at around three thirty in the morning (11.30pm local time) vaunting our dinner and breakfast vouchers and our free hotel rooms. I checked into my palatial room and called Air Canada. After around 20 minutes on hold, I spoke to a very friendly woman who told me cheerfully that the next direct flight to Boston was on Monday. Recall that this is currently Saturday evening, and that my conference started on Monday. The best she could offer was an indirect flight via Ottawa, leaving Halifax at 06.15. (Leading zero deliberate this time.) This would mean getting the 04.30 shuttle bus and the time by now was half past midnight (half four in body-clock terms.)
I decided to make the most of my very, very short time in this nice hotel and went for a swim in the pool. It had officially closed hours before, but the woman on reception had a twinkle in her eye and said "just swim quietly and I'll turn a blind eye." So I turned a few lengths in a gorgeous, completely empty hotel pool and retired, hungry but ready to sleep. As it turned out, dinner had already finished by the time we'd arrived, and breakfast didn't start till six, so the vouchers went unsoent, we went unfed and it was back to the airport for the whole sorry lot of us. (In an amusing side-note, an elderly Indian lady had broken her glasses and she and the friendly receptionist who let me swim were trying to fix them. I stepped in cavalierly and manhandled the lense back into its wire casing. All were jubilant, until the lady put the glasses back on, and the lens came flying out in spectacular fashion landing on the floor with a scrape. Ah well.)
A deeply boring 90-minutes at the departure gate at Halifax airport was leavened only by a fun Canadian couple, the male of which told me that there's no good coffee to be had in North America, and that the best he'd ever had had been in New Zealand where he'd drunk something mysteriously called a "Flat White". I reassured him that no one in London knew what it was either, but that we were willing to pay $5 for the experience. He also informed me that "oatmeal" is a synonym for "porridge". Thus was my Sunday morning spent.
Upon arrival at Ottowa at around eight in the morning local time (I was no longer keeping track of what the time really was: I just knew I was overwhelmingly tired and very hungry), I was told that the flight to Boston I was booked on had in fact had been overbooked by three whole passengers and that the next flight wasn't until 16.30 that afternoon, a spookily similar eight hours to the eight hours I'd just spent in and around Heathrow. But there was hope: perhaps I could go down to the gate anyway, and see if anyone didn't turn up. I'd then be next in line to hop to the US. I was given a further meal voucher (a measly 10 Canadian dollars, which wasn't enough to buy me an omlette) and sent on my way. I sat nervously waiting as happy Boston-bound customers chatted light-heartedly with the staff and made their way onto the plane. As the last one filed on, an announcement was made: "Jim Smith, this is your final call for flight 123 to Boston. Please present yourself to the gate immediately." Hope surged in my heart. An second announcement a minute later: "Jim Smith, if you want to board the flight to Boston this is your last chance." I made myself known to the gate staff. We traded nervous glances. The woman said, let me just check he's not already on the plane; he might have slipped past me. I thought this a laughable eventuality and prepared to show my boarding card for the very last time.
After a period spent peering out of the window, in dark conference with a colleague, she returned to tell me that, yes, Jim Smith had indeed manage to evade her security checks and was already on the plane. The taxiing had already begun. I felt like I wanted to cry.
Instead of crying I sat and waited to be escorted back though US customs and back onto Canadian soil, where I'd never wanted to be in the first place. I was passed around several members of staff, who told me first that there was another flight via Toronto, my third unwanted Canadian destination, and then that that flight was full. Finally I was booked, like the inevitable sentencing of a kangaroo court, onto the flight leaving for Boston at four thirty in the afteroon. I was given a further meal voucher, written a cheque for $100 Canadian (about 60 quid) and told to wait for the flight. I said that it was probably time for me to see someone from customer services or a manager, and a concerned looking man with a clipboard was duly summoned. I recounted to him the whole unhappy tale, about how I'd barely eaten or slept in 24 hours and how far away I still was from my destination and he said, well, I never do this, ever. And if I do it, you've got to promise not to tell anyone. But I'll take you to the Maple Lounge, the kind of Chris Huhne-style low-security prison with perks that the Daily Mail gets wound up about, and you can wait out the rest of your sentence there.
And so it came to pass. I'm now a mere five hours away from getting on a plane that, in principle at least, is going to a place I actually want to be, and I'm enjoying the free internet, comfy chairs and UNLIMITED DRAUGHT BEER which the Maple Lounge is proud to offer its Gold Star customers.
The moral? 1) Don't fly Air Canada. 2) Don't get a flight that's going via somewhere, even if you save a hundred quid, and finally, the closest to my heart: 3) Don't just put up with the crappy first answer people in authority give you. Push a little harder and you too could be drinking unlimited draught beverages in a low-security wing for the rest of your pointless little days.
Your ever affectionate travelling correspondant,
Rob
Which is odd, because whenever I'm with anyone else, life tends to drift by at the speed of a lazy river, and I'm either placid and serene, or leaping with inanities and fun.
But this is a story of the former variety: one in which things have happened to me, and I have steadfastly refused to bat an eyelid through the whole, deeply-eyebrow-raising affair. It begins thus:
My flight to Boston for a two-day conference, for which 6 nights in a swish hotel had been booked by my absurdly generous research project, was scheduled for 12.30 on Saturday afternoon. I was delighted with the booking, blithely using words such as "civilised" and "appropriate" to describe the non-RyanAir style departure time.
I was pushing the casual arrival thing a little far when I arrived at Terminal 3 at 11.40, but was concerned to see that the flight I was booked on was reading "Scheduled to leave at 08.30" on the slow-scrolling departure screen. I couldn't divine whether this meant that it had left at 8.30 that morning, or that it wasn't going to be leaving until 8.30 tomorrow morning. Either way, the traditional racing pulse, that accompanies a realisation that, in my slow-paced flaneuring, I've actually fallen genuinely foul of deadline which can't be talked around, accompanied my hurried visit to an Air Canada representative.
It turns out that the sign had meant to say "Scheduled to leave at 20.30". (I enjoyed the thought that some well-meaning operator had gone to the trouble of adding a zero to the start of the time on the screen, hoping to make things look more official, but actually giving a definite indicator that this was to be read as a 24-hour clock system time.) The friendly woman behind the desk said that I could either take a couple of meal vouchers, and enjoy LHR for the next eight hours, or that I could take a "day room" at Air Canada's expense. Thinking of the kind of 'day cabins' you get on cross-channel ferries (little more than prison cells with the locks operable from the inside) I asked what facilities precisely were being offered. It was in fact a room at a Holiday Inn just round the corner. She phoned and was told that because the flight 'would have already closed' by the time the phone call was being made, there would be no day room avaialble after all. I glumly accepted my meal vouchers and began trying to imagine eight hours of terminal unwellness. I took the precaution of asking to speak to a manager, just in case they were able to turn the seemingly arbitrary decision around. After around nine seconds of telling him what had happened, he disappeared into his office and returned brandishing a day room pass. So I, triumphant, left the concourse of Heathrow for the imagined golf courses of complimentary hotel living. The reality was significantly less impressive and I spent a deeply bored six hours reading my Margaret Atwood, listening to the radio and eating complimentary, but close to inedible, pub-style fish and chips in the hotel 'brasserie'.
Finally the flight was boarding and I was told that, although we'd all missed our various connections out of Halifax (where's that I hear you ask? I didn't know either. Canada, apparently), there would be a representative of Air Canada to meet us off the plane and smooth our troubled ways to Boston with complimentaries, apologies and rebooked flights.
When we arrive in Halifax at around 2.30 in the morning London time, the Air Canada representative chosen was a lone guy in a baseball cap, surrounded by anxious travellers with tired children, all trying to get an answer where none was forthcoming. He had tickets for a shuttle bus, and nights in a nearby hotel to give out. As for the connecting flight to Boston: Give 'em a call, he said, they'll sort you out.
We arrived at our hotel, this one far plusher than the London effort, at around three thirty in the morning (11.30pm local time) vaunting our dinner and breakfast vouchers and our free hotel rooms. I checked into my palatial room and called Air Canada. After around 20 minutes on hold, I spoke to a very friendly woman who told me cheerfully that the next direct flight to Boston was on Monday. Recall that this is currently Saturday evening, and that my conference started on Monday. The best she could offer was an indirect flight via Ottawa, leaving Halifax at 06.15. (Leading zero deliberate this time.) This would mean getting the 04.30 shuttle bus and the time by now was half past midnight (half four in body-clock terms.)
I decided to make the most of my very, very short time in this nice hotel and went for a swim in the pool. It had officially closed hours before, but the woman on reception had a twinkle in her eye and said "just swim quietly and I'll turn a blind eye." So I turned a few lengths in a gorgeous, completely empty hotel pool and retired, hungry but ready to sleep. As it turned out, dinner had already finished by the time we'd arrived, and breakfast didn't start till six, so the vouchers went unsoent, we went unfed and it was back to the airport for the whole sorry lot of us. (In an amusing side-note, an elderly Indian lady had broken her glasses and she and the friendly receptionist who let me swim were trying to fix them. I stepped in cavalierly and manhandled the lense back into its wire casing. All were jubilant, until the lady put the glasses back on, and the lens came flying out in spectacular fashion landing on the floor with a scrape. Ah well.)
A deeply boring 90-minutes at the departure gate at Halifax airport was leavened only by a fun Canadian couple, the male of which told me that there's no good coffee to be had in North America, and that the best he'd ever had had been in New Zealand where he'd drunk something mysteriously called a "Flat White". I reassured him that no one in London knew what it was either, but that we were willing to pay $5 for the experience. He also informed me that "oatmeal" is a synonym for "porridge". Thus was my Sunday morning spent.
Upon arrival at Ottowa at around eight in the morning local time (I was no longer keeping track of what the time really was: I just knew I was overwhelmingly tired and very hungry), I was told that the flight to Boston I was booked on had in fact had been overbooked by three whole passengers and that the next flight wasn't until 16.30 that afternoon, a spookily similar eight hours to the eight hours I'd just spent in and around Heathrow. But there was hope: perhaps I could go down to the gate anyway, and see if anyone didn't turn up. I'd then be next in line to hop to the US. I was given a further meal voucher (a measly 10 Canadian dollars, which wasn't enough to buy me an omlette) and sent on my way. I sat nervously waiting as happy Boston-bound customers chatted light-heartedly with the staff and made their way onto the plane. As the last one filed on, an announcement was made: "Jim Smith, this is your final call for flight 123 to Boston. Please present yourself to the gate immediately." Hope surged in my heart. An second announcement a minute later: "Jim Smith, if you want to board the flight to Boston this is your last chance." I made myself known to the gate staff. We traded nervous glances. The woman said, let me just check he's not already on the plane; he might have slipped past me. I thought this a laughable eventuality and prepared to show my boarding card for the very last time.
After a period spent peering out of the window, in dark conference with a colleague, she returned to tell me that, yes, Jim Smith had indeed manage to evade her security checks and was already on the plane. The taxiing had already begun. I felt like I wanted to cry.
Instead of crying I sat and waited to be escorted back though US customs and back onto Canadian soil, where I'd never wanted to be in the first place. I was passed around several members of staff, who told me first that there was another flight via Toronto, my third unwanted Canadian destination, and then that that flight was full. Finally I was booked, like the inevitable sentencing of a kangaroo court, onto the flight leaving for Boston at four thirty in the afteroon. I was given a further meal voucher, written a cheque for $100 Canadian (about 60 quid) and told to wait for the flight. I said that it was probably time for me to see someone from customer services or a manager, and a concerned looking man with a clipboard was duly summoned. I recounted to him the whole unhappy tale, about how I'd barely eaten or slept in 24 hours and how far away I still was from my destination and he said, well, I never do this, ever. And if I do it, you've got to promise not to tell anyone. But I'll take you to the Maple Lounge, the kind of Chris Huhne-style low-security prison with perks that the Daily Mail gets wound up about, and you can wait out the rest of your sentence there.
And so it came to pass. I'm now a mere five hours away from getting on a plane that, in principle at least, is going to a place I actually want to be, and I'm enjoying the free internet, comfy chairs and UNLIMITED DRAUGHT BEER which the Maple Lounge is proud to offer its Gold Star customers.
The moral? 1) Don't fly Air Canada. 2) Don't get a flight that's going via somewhere, even if you save a hundred quid, and finally, the closest to my heart: 3) Don't just put up with the crappy first answer people in authority give you. Push a little harder and you too could be drinking unlimited draught beverages in a low-security wing for the rest of your pointless little days.
Your ever affectionate travelling correspondant,
Rob
