Roy Hudd writes just for you…
Jetting off for some muchneeded winter sun, Roy at the wonders if the drama effort! airport is worth all the
When me and the missus go abroad for a winter break, we like to get the optimum dosage of Vitamin D, but as I hate flying we rarely go on a flight that is longer than three hours and I always swear I’ll never go in an aeroplane again...
It’s not the being in the air that drives me bananas but the drama that precedes it. Arriving at the airport several hours before the plane takes off, you join the queue to get through passport control where the guard barely stifles a snigger as he compares your photograph with how you look now.
Next comes the walk through the ‘Arch of Suspicion’ which invariably makes a Hammer-horror screaming noise that says ‘I’ve got one’ as I go through. You then realise you forgot to take off your belt and place it, along with your shoes, money and ineffective St Christopher in the plastic tray that makes its stately progress through the X-ray machine where every shadow shown on the screen seems to be the shape of something containing drugs! Somehow you get past the disbelieving stares of the people who spend their time in front of those all-seeing cameras. Phew!
Putting your trousers back on (they should never have asked you to remove your belt!) you’re then left wandering around dutyfree shops which offer everything you’ll ever need in your life and lots of things you’ll never need in this life or the next.
Then, when you try to sit down, you are faced with dozens of bored kids on seats meant for ancient grown-ups. If you dare ask the person in charge of the little darlings if they would take the year-old toddler onto their lap so you can rest your three-scoreyears-and-ten bottom on a plastic seat, they give you an unfriendly look and a belligerent: “My baby/granddaughter/ grandson has a perfect right to occupy a place – so shove orf!”
More aimless wandering around the ‘gimme your money’ shopping mall until your boarding gate is announced. Your gate, of course, is the one on the very outskirts of the airport.
Just when you think you’re finally off, you then join a mysterious queue that snakes its way round and back on itself until you eventually find yourself boarding a packed-to-the-gunnels charabanc. This takes you to the steep staircase that leads to the flying machine. You stagger up, thrown off balance by the heavy plastic bags full of duty free.
Then comes the activity that should be made an Olympic sport – getting the hand luggage into the overhead locker. All those cheery folk you smiled at as you passed each other in the mysterious queue suddenly turn into vigilantes determined not to share the locker space with anyone. Thankfully, a member of the cabin crew, trained in unarmed combat, sorts it all out and we await take off.
“We’re just waiting for clearance” announces someone who is pretending to be the pilot – and wait we do. Sometimes a few minutes and sometimes until it’s time to buy more duty free. But at last we’re off and looking forward to our relaxing few days – until we start thinking it will be the same old performance coming home.
If next summer is as sunny as the one we had this year, the good old UK is where we’ll be getting our Vitamin D – that’s for sure!
‘You join a mysterious queue that snakes its way round until you eventually find yourself boarding a packedto-the-gunnels charabanc’