- Joined
- Nov 6, 2007
- Messages
- 12,825
- Location
- North Oxfordshire
- Car
- His - Denim Blue A220 AMG Line Premium / Hers - Obsidian Black R172 SLK55
...courtesy of Mercedes-Benz. I'll explain.
This week I've been working in the Czech republic. BA flight from Heathrow on Monday managed to be an hour late leaving and 45 mins late arriving. Not too bad from a business perspective because it just messed up my evening
One of the Czech guys I've been working with had a terrible cold cum flu-type bug which he went down with on Monday but, as it would have made my visit worthless if he'd gone off sick, he came in to work anyway. Not his fault he has the lurgy and I bear him no ill-will. Needless to say that by Wednesday evening I had my suspicions that I too was starting to succumb to the bug. This was confirmed during Thursday when I started to feel like the proverbial bag o' sh*te
Thursday afternoon I was driven to Prague airport (an hour's drive) and checked in just after 5pm for my 18:20 flight on good old BA to be told that "there's a minimum 40 minute delay, but that's likely to get longer". Great. When you're feeling rough and all you want to do is get home the last thing you want to do is sit around an airport terminal for an indefinate delay. Plane finally got pushed back at 19:50 - a full hour and a half late and was making good progress until we had to enter the hold at Heathrow for 15-20mins. Finally landed and took another 10mins of stop-start taxiing to reach the stand which seemed to be at the farthest corner possible at T1. Huge queue at Customs caused by lots of immigration control bods sat at cordoned off desks marked "Non-EU Nationals" doing precious little - no, make that absolutely nothing - while about 500 UK and EU passport holders were corraled into the queue for the three open desks allocated to them
Wandered down the steps to baggage reclaim and was greeted with a sea of people peering hopefully at the matrix sign that tells you which carousel to collect your bags from. All flights were tagged with the word "Wait". Marvellous. Looked around the baggage hall and saw literally hundreds of suitcases, bags and other luggage piled high on trolleys parked two, three and even four deep against the perimiter walls. A cursory look at some of it made it quite clear that at least some of this would never be reunited with its owners because any identifying tags they may have had on them had gone missing at some stage in the sorry process. Pushchairs, suitcases, hold-alls, you name it, it may have been in Heathrow but as far as its owner was concerned it was lost for ever. After approx 20 minutes of zero activity at the carousels and watching armed plod caressing their weapons(!) we were treated to an explanatory announcement that this chaos was the result of resources - both people and equipment - being redeployed to clear the backlog of luggage at T4 and were asked to be patient. Welcome to the third-world that now includes the UK. Finally picked my bag off the carousel after about another 20 minutes and caught the bus to the long-stay carpark.
Found my car, stowed the luggage in the boot, started it up and reversed out of the bay. Put the shift lever into D and that's when it happened. A feeling of calm and serentity wafted over me as I glided out of the carpark and glanced at the three-pointed star at the front of the bonnet leading me home. And that's when I remembered exactly why I'd bought a Benz and not an Audi or BMW
This week I've been working in the Czech republic. BA flight from Heathrow on Monday managed to be an hour late leaving and 45 mins late arriving. Not too bad from a business perspective because it just messed up my evening
One of the Czech guys I've been working with had a terrible cold cum flu-type bug which he went down with on Monday but, as it would have made my visit worthless if he'd gone off sick, he came in to work anyway. Not his fault he has the lurgy and I bear him no ill-will. Needless to say that by Wednesday evening I had my suspicions that I too was starting to succumb to the bug. This was confirmed during Thursday when I started to feel like the proverbial bag o' sh*te
Thursday afternoon I was driven to Prague airport (an hour's drive) and checked in just after 5pm for my 18:20 flight on good old BA to be told that "there's a minimum 40 minute delay, but that's likely to get longer". Great. When you're feeling rough and all you want to do is get home the last thing you want to do is sit around an airport terminal for an indefinate delay. Plane finally got pushed back at 19:50 - a full hour and a half late and was making good progress until we had to enter the hold at Heathrow for 15-20mins. Finally landed and took another 10mins of stop-start taxiing to reach the stand which seemed to be at the farthest corner possible at T1. Huge queue at Customs caused by lots of immigration control bods sat at cordoned off desks marked "Non-EU Nationals" doing precious little - no, make that absolutely nothing - while about 500 UK and EU passport holders were corraled into the queue for the three open desks allocated to them
Wandered down the steps to baggage reclaim and was greeted with a sea of people peering hopefully at the matrix sign that tells you which carousel to collect your bags from. All flights were tagged with the word "Wait". Marvellous. Looked around the baggage hall and saw literally hundreds of suitcases, bags and other luggage piled high on trolleys parked two, three and even four deep against the perimiter walls. A cursory look at some of it made it quite clear that at least some of this would never be reunited with its owners because any identifying tags they may have had on them had gone missing at some stage in the sorry process. Pushchairs, suitcases, hold-alls, you name it, it may have been in Heathrow but as far as its owner was concerned it was lost for ever. After approx 20 minutes of zero activity at the carousels and watching armed plod caressing their weapons(!) we were treated to an explanatory announcement that this chaos was the result of resources - both people and equipment - being redeployed to clear the backlog of luggage at T4 and were asked to be patient. Welcome to the third-world that now includes the UK. Finally picked my bag off the carousel after about another 20 minutes and caught the bus to the long-stay carpark.
Found my car, stowed the luggage in the boot, started it up and reversed out of the bay. Put the shift lever into D and that's when it happened. A feeling of calm and serentity wafted over me as I glided out of the carpark and glanced at the three-pointed star at the front of the bonnet leading me home. And that's when I remembered exactly why I'd bought a Benz and not an Audi or BMW
