Airport Adventure

It’s almost ten years since I last used Stansted airport, and I couldn’t help noticing  the increase in the number flights considering it was a weekday in term-time, and how many people were in the central area lounge area, resigned for a long wait. I arrived at the airport three and a half hours before my flight, as the next coach would have been cutting things too fine. I shall know not to do that next time.

Instead of joining the others wheeling their small Ryanair overhead locker size suitcases around the circle, searching for the cheapest coffee, or waiting for free seat, I found a stool in Café Nero and occupied myself trying to write a better ending to my second novel. This resulted in one of those wonderful encounters with a stranger who was genuinely interested in my book and later messaged me to say she had bought it online. Once she had left for her flight I tried to kill the next two hours looking at the shops (wheeled case in tow) while checking the notice board every so often. Eventually, later than expected, the departure gate was revealed and I could just about read the destination with my loose, varifocal, reactor- light glasses (I didn’t know until then how loose they were, but I had fallen on my nose a week before and blamed the changed shape of my face rather than any alteration in the glasses.)

Panicking that I didn’t have long until the plane was due to take off I headed towards gate 4B, took a train to the other side of the airport and followed the other passengers to an eerily quiet area where the only flights listed were going to places like Abu Dhabi or Izmir. It took me longer than it should have to check the Ryanair App (why didn’t I think of that) and discover I should have been at gate 48. After being misdirected back to the train, which only went one way and held a detective device and a machine voice commandiing me in a machine voice to disembark, I found myself in the staff-only lift with a stern attendant glaring at me as I alighted on the next floor. Never have I been so glad to have the excuse of grey hair and a proven inability to read notice boards or use my mobile phone, or conversely, legs that are longer and stronger than average for a woman of seventy.

I half ran, half strode back through a mile-long secret corridor to another one where everyone was moving in the opposite direction, doing my best to ignore my sweat and staggered breath, cursing myself and thanking God almost simultaneously- I had after all offered some urgent prayers in the staff-only area.

I could see as I approached gate 48 that I could have walked at normal pace, even stopped to watched planes land and take off (the previous waiting area had no windows) and I was still one of the first to be allowed on the plane, take off having delayed by yet another hour.

I can’t think of a moral to this tale, but I shall use the experience of sheer panic somewhere in my writing!