My failure to launch
Earlier today, I had assumed I would be in Berlin by now. Oh how wrong I was. Crucial to the success of my journey was accurate information about the travel time between London Euston and London Heathrow Terminal 5, but it turned out that this was the one thing I lacked.
I spent some time planning the domestic leg of my jaunt to Germany - my first in some 15 years. Little did I know, when planning and booking my train and tube tickets, I was carefully arranging to miss my flight by a matter of minutes.
I don't remember from whom I heard it takes only forty five minutes to travel from Euston to Heathrow on the tube, nor why I believed them. Neither can I fathom why I didn't think to check this bit of trivia before making the rest of my plans around it.
Today I learnt that on a weekday afternoon, it takes not forty five minutes, but an hour and twenty minutes to travel from Euston to Heathrow by tube. I arrived at departures precisely four minutes too late and was assiduously refused on the flight by the gentleman manning the bag drop off point. I was to endure a forty minute wait in a queue of fifty or so passengers manqué in various states of irritation and distress before I was to learn the cost of my error.
I walked up to a desk from which the previous customers had just left. The customer services and relations agent promptly shooed me away and directed me back to the queue with almost as much ferocity as that with which her fingers were stabbing her keyboard. I presumed she was inputting some information about her previous customers' transaction into her system. She was evidently not ready for me yet. I dutifully traipsed back along the row of desks to the front of the queue, where I waited some 15 seconds before the woman in front of whom I'd just been standing looked up and motioned for me to come down to her desk. No points for guessing her unnecessary pet hate.
I handed the customer services agent my boarding card and explained that I'd missed my flight.
"I need your passport," she said impatiently. I produced it. Taking it from me, she resumed her attack on the keyboard. I couldn't help but wonder what it had done to deserve such a mercilessly vigorous barrage. "Your ticket is non-refundable and non-transferable," she announced," you will need to buy a ticket on a later flight." This I already knew, but I thought better of telling her so and I remained silent as she continued her percussion solo.
After several more clack-clack-clacks, she addressed me again. "There are no more seats on flights today. You will need to fly tomorrow," she declared tersely without looking up from her screen. A few moments latter the clattering came to a stop. "OK. A seat on the 7.15 tomorrow morning will be £178." She shot me an expectant look over the rims of her glasses. I made no attempt to disguise my misery. For all her sensitivity, this fine specimen of womanhood didn't look as though she especially needed shielding from the facial expression of my inner pain.
I couldn't bring myself to hand over the plastic. The pause in our dialogue might have been less uncomfortable had I not been being regarded with a stare of sufficient intensity to give me a light tan, but as it was, I squirmed for only a brief moment before whimpering,
"I don't think I can afford that."
"Let me see what I can do for you," chimed my new friend helpfully.
Jab-jab-jab. Her keyboard shuddered again and the ticket magically came down to £153.70.
"What just happened," I wondered, "and more importantly, can it happen again?" The customer services agent's powers of empathy must have extended to telepathy for she answered my unuttered question immediately.
"That's the best price I can do for that flight."
I thanked her but declined the offer, at which point she told me that failure to rebook an outward flight with BA would invalidate my return flight. What an uplifting piece of news in otherwise so gloomy a situation.
I had a coffee and panettone from Café Nero to bolster my spirits and proceeded to spend an entirely fruitless 30 minutes looking for viable alternative routes to Berlin over an extremely unresponsive internet connection using the hideous and clunky custom web browser of the internet café. In retrospect, I mused that I would have been better off using the browser on my phone.
Reluctant to lose the £200 I'd already spent on the journey to Berlin, I decided to bite the bullet and pay the extra £154. I asked a member of the airport staff whether or not it was permissible to sleep on the airport floor. She explained that, although not comfortable, I would not be the first to try and yes, it was allowed. A second wait in the customer services queue, this time only 10 minutes, saw me standing in front of the same angelic BA employee as on the previous occasion.
"Berlin?" she enquired brightly and beamed at me as if expecting a tip for 'remembering my order'.
As I prepared to burden my credit card once more, I disengaged all the mental controls that had prevented me from taking the next day's ticket when it was first offered. The first of these was my sense of reason, without which, my plans for a sensibly priced dinner consisting of a £2 Marks & Sparks sandwich deal went out the window. I spotted a sign bearing the inscription " Luxury Hotel" and I adjusted my course accordingly.
A wide and long corridor with a polished floor lead to the complex that housed the hotel. I happened upon a restaurant by the name of 'Vivre'. A glance at their menus revealed that they had steak and Chianti. I took a table. The service was courteous and attentive, if occasionally slightly nervous, though not enough to make one feel uncomfortable. The steak was very tasty and the Chianti the perfect accompaniment. A second glass and an excellent espresso served to complete a meal that did a good job of calming the squall of bile and vitriol that had brewed inside me over the course of the afternoon.
"Now to my bed," I said to myself. "I wonder if any particular bit of Terminal 5's floorspace offers a particularly peaceful place for a few hours' kip." I'm off to find out...
I spent some time planning the domestic leg of my jaunt to Germany - my first in some 15 years. Little did I know, when planning and booking my train and tube tickets, I was carefully arranging to miss my flight by a matter of minutes.
I don't remember from whom I heard it takes only forty five minutes to travel from Euston to Heathrow on the tube, nor why I believed them. Neither can I fathom why I didn't think to check this bit of trivia before making the rest of my plans around it.
Today I learnt that on a weekday afternoon, it takes not forty five minutes, but an hour and twenty minutes to travel from Euston to Heathrow by tube. I arrived at departures precisely four minutes too late and was assiduously refused on the flight by the gentleman manning the bag drop off point. I was to endure a forty minute wait in a queue of fifty or so passengers manqué in various states of irritation and distress before I was to learn the cost of my error.
I walked up to a desk from which the previous customers had just left. The customer services and relations agent promptly shooed me away and directed me back to the queue with almost as much ferocity as that with which her fingers were stabbing her keyboard. I presumed she was inputting some information about her previous customers' transaction into her system. She was evidently not ready for me yet. I dutifully traipsed back along the row of desks to the front of the queue, where I waited some 15 seconds before the woman in front of whom I'd just been standing looked up and motioned for me to come down to her desk. No points for guessing her unnecessary pet hate.
I handed the customer services agent my boarding card and explained that I'd missed my flight.
"I need your passport," she said impatiently. I produced it. Taking it from me, she resumed her attack on the keyboard. I couldn't help but wonder what it had done to deserve such a mercilessly vigorous barrage. "Your ticket is non-refundable and non-transferable," she announced," you will need to buy a ticket on a later flight." This I already knew, but I thought better of telling her so and I remained silent as she continued her percussion solo.
After several more clack-clack-clacks, she addressed me again. "There are no more seats on flights today. You will need to fly tomorrow," she declared tersely without looking up from her screen. A few moments latter the clattering came to a stop. "OK. A seat on the 7.15 tomorrow morning will be £178." She shot me an expectant look over the rims of her glasses. I made no attempt to disguise my misery. For all her sensitivity, this fine specimen of womanhood didn't look as though she especially needed shielding from the facial expression of my inner pain.
I couldn't bring myself to hand over the plastic. The pause in our dialogue might have been less uncomfortable had I not been being regarded with a stare of sufficient intensity to give me a light tan, but as it was, I squirmed for only a brief moment before whimpering,
"I don't think I can afford that."
"Let me see what I can do for you," chimed my new friend helpfully.
Jab-jab-jab. Her keyboard shuddered again and the ticket magically came down to £153.70.
"What just happened," I wondered, "and more importantly, can it happen again?" The customer services agent's powers of empathy must have extended to telepathy for she answered my unuttered question immediately.
"That's the best price I can do for that flight."
I thanked her but declined the offer, at which point she told me that failure to rebook an outward flight with BA would invalidate my return flight. What an uplifting piece of news in otherwise so gloomy a situation.
I had a coffee and panettone from Café Nero to bolster my spirits and proceeded to spend an entirely fruitless 30 minutes looking for viable alternative routes to Berlin over an extremely unresponsive internet connection using the hideous and clunky custom web browser of the internet café. In retrospect, I mused that I would have been better off using the browser on my phone.
Reluctant to lose the £200 I'd already spent on the journey to Berlin, I decided to bite the bullet and pay the extra £154. I asked a member of the airport staff whether or not it was permissible to sleep on the airport floor. She explained that, although not comfortable, I would not be the first to try and yes, it was allowed. A second wait in the customer services queue, this time only 10 minutes, saw me standing in front of the same angelic BA employee as on the previous occasion.
"Berlin?" she enquired brightly and beamed at me as if expecting a tip for 'remembering my order'.
As I prepared to burden my credit card once more, I disengaged all the mental controls that had prevented me from taking the next day's ticket when it was first offered. The first of these was my sense of reason, without which, my plans for a sensibly priced dinner consisting of a £2 Marks & Sparks sandwich deal went out the window. I spotted a sign bearing the inscription " Luxury Hotel" and I adjusted my course accordingly.
A wide and long corridor with a polished floor lead to the complex that housed the hotel. I happened upon a restaurant by the name of 'Vivre'. A glance at their menus revealed that they had steak and Chianti. I took a table. The service was courteous and attentive, if occasionally slightly nervous, though not enough to make one feel uncomfortable. The steak was very tasty and the Chianti the perfect accompaniment. A second glass and an excellent espresso served to complete a meal that did a good job of calming the squall of bile and vitriol that had brewed inside me over the course of the afternoon.
"Now to my bed," I said to myself. "I wonder if any particular bit of Terminal 5's floorspace offers a particularly peaceful place for a few hours' kip." I'm off to find out...
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