Oh, Airports

What excitement when the day before your long-awaited holiday arrives! You’ll only be gone for ten days, but you’re going to switch off, you’re going to relax, you’re not going to think about anything in your daily life, or the problems, the stress, the small frustrations that accumulate and leave you tired, anxious and without perspective.

You pack your bags, you leave your house tidy, you remember to turn everything off, you set the alarm clock, which is really not necessary as you are not going to sleep, and if you manage to do so, you will wake up every hour to ensure you won’t get up late. And then you check three more times that you have indeed switched off, unplugged, and closed everything, without forgetting to scan the hall for any stray hairs… or cats.

A friend takes you to the airport and stays with you until you have to board. You only have a couple of hours left before you are away, escaping, leaving all this behind for at least a while. You say goodbye to your friend, you go through security, you look for your gate and there, with its treacherous little lights, on the screen you see…5 hours delay.

First the panic sets in:

My friend has already left, I’m here alone, no one knows where I am, I’m trapped forever in this no man’s land…

Then the cruel reality makes its presence known. Damn, what about my connecting flight/train/bus? You do a quick calculation. There’s no way. Take it easy. Time to make decisions. I’ll go with another company to arrive on time. It’s only a one-way ticket.

I’m going to ask. And when I finally get an answer after a seemingly interminable queue, a hysterical laugh that is impossible to hide escapes me. €900. But in fact that flight, leaving for my destination, also doesn’t arrive on time. So the decision has already been made. I’ll have to wait and hope for the best. So I do wait, and when I arrive, if I arrive, I’ll try a sob story with the other company on the second flight to change my ticket at no cost. What if they don’t? I don’t have the money to pay for another flight. When it arrives, if it arrives, I will be stuck there at Gatwick forever, unable to leave, my life converted into an eternal walk through Duty Free without being able to shop.

At this moment I realize that I have been paralyzed in the middle of the hall and people are looking at me strangely. Time to breathe. Don’t lose your sense of humor, I tell myself, there is absolutely nothing you can do, so relax and take it easy.

I start by walking through the entire waiting area as slowly as possible to kill time. It takes 10 minutes.

I sit at the end of the hall and listen to a comedy show on my phone. It takes 50 minutes. An hour has passed. I have four left.

I start sending messages, hoping that someone will take pity on me and call me or at least answer. Some do. Good. At least I have friends. It takes 20 minutes.

I get up to go down to the other end of the hall to sit somewhere else and have a different view. That is, the view reversed. It takes me 15 minutes, including a bathroom stop. I didn’t even need to go.

I listen to another comedy show. It takes 60 minutes.

Reading the traveller’s rights info and thinking about what I am going to try to claim, I find out that they have to provide us with food. I get up with new strength and go to the cafeteria. I explain to the boy, handsome and smiling, that I am late. Laughing, he says–The flight, you mean… wilfully understanding that I have come to him with doubts about my cycle, and laughing at my Spanish.

I laugh too, weak and beginning to hallucinate – Very funny, tee hee – I answer.

It turns out that I have to go to another cafeteria to claim my right to food. I arrive, and see a stand with a security guard and a sign proclaiming “Only for travellers on the delayed flight to London.” And below “A drink and a sandwich.” Yipee. I actually don’t want anything. The sandwich looks horrible, but they owe it to me, so I take it. It’s not good.

Three hours have passed. Two left.

I head towards the gate. There are already plenty of people there, but I manage to find a seat and start looking at the people, and yes, listen to their conversations. You see everything; families, couples, singles, children, grandparents… some argue, others are plugged into their mobiles, some sleep, others play cards. It is a microcosm, surreal, an altered reality. Everything seems normal, but something is missing. A feeling of the passage of time perhaps? The only sensation is that life has stopped, time has stopped, and we are all behaving as usual, but trapped, with no future.

I am absorbed in my reflections when thirty minutes later they announce that the flight to London is going to be delayed another hour, due to “technical issues.”

I am already resigned and I suspect that I have also lost the ability to think clearly. Everything is clouding over as if I were drunk but without the high. This morning may have been yesterday, or last week, or two minutes ago.

I eat my sandwich. I finish my sandwich. I want to vomit. I don’t vomit. I belch. I try to cover it up with a cough. The lady next to me doesn’t seem convinced.

One hour left, supposedly. I no longer read, listen, or watch. I have been left as if drugged with boredom. Suddenly the crowd rises and approaches me decisively like in the Lion King stampede. I almost fall off my seat with fright.

Oh for the love of… No, wait…There is a gate change.

And we’re off. People coming from other directions move quickly aside, making way for us as if we were revolutionaries heading towards the Bastille. The bits of conversation I hear don’t even contain words. Between tiredness, desperation, anger and frustration, communication has been reduced to noises, grunts, exclamations, huffing and puffing. I get the giggles. People look at me. I laugh more. I think they put something in the sandwiches. I don’t complain.

Finally, we board the plane. Good.

An hour later we take off. Not so good.

The captain gets on the microphone and explains everything.

This morning the plane was still in the hangar…and the weather was bad…and an incident closed the runway…and it was raining…and well, well, a gap…it was difficult…what a rain plan and runway flight and the tower and replace the drivers and that because………. Unintelligible.

Being treated as cattle is unacceptable, including for cattle. But we accept it when there is no other option. Maybe we shouldn’t. And now I consider; would a boycott be so crazy?

Trapped again, but this time with no escape from the fractious children, the arguments, and unable to stand up, I start giggling once more. Let’s see if we arrive and take a few laps to pass the time before landing. They say the aerial view of London is beautiful. Especially in the middle of the night.

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Episode Eighteen: Giving a Name