After a great weekend with glorious sunny warm weather, I was surprised to see the forecasts for Monday and Tuesday, in Portadown, minimum temperature of -2 night and rain during the day! I had to get my winter coat out.
There was madness going on at the airport, I had to queue to buy a priority boarding ticket, if you could have seen the queue to get through security it was well worth the £4, the queue was longer than I have ever seen it, right down the escalators round the and about 40 yards back into the hall in a queue about 6 deep. The golden ticket got me swiftly through, but not before the woman in the lift who had been extolling the virtues of the priority queue and how organised she was pre-booking at £3, spent 5 minutes looking through her folder for here priority proof of purchase and boarding card not very organised!
There was some confusion as we were herded by the Easyjet queue system because the queuing poles and tapes naturally sent people (without advice from the Easyjet staff) down the special assistance section, which soon became full. There were quite a few confused faces at the beginning until everyone got the right idea and the normal people queue, started to fill up. Note I now consider my self a normal person, no speedy boarding for me anymore, who needs it? I was at the front of the normal people and would get a seat towards the back of the plane, which according to my good friend Rory is statistically the section where most plane crash survivors are seated.
I had a twitter conversation with @mike_lambert who seems to spend his life at Luton and Schipol airports, apparently the priority boarding was closed, even the machine I found open, in the past, I must make a point to save a £ and pre-book the priority lane in future, it is only going to get worse through the summer.
During the flight there was some confusion over our itinerary when the pilot announced that we were over the Isle of Wight, a few minutes later he came back on the tannoy to put our minds at rest we were over the Isle of Man. Not sure who was the astute person who noticed that, I some how filter the messages, and the details of what is bellow is filtered out. Perhaps I should learn to listen more carefully, one day I could miss an important detail?
An uneventful drive to the office and an equally ordinary day at the office was followed by a short drive to the Hotel. After the busy weekend it would be and early night, so I had a shower and went down to the eatery, for some sustenance.
My choice was Traditional Fish & Chips with mushy peas, and it was delivered in the usual swift fashion, where I swear the chef can mind read because the food is clearly cooked to order but always very quickly. Perhaps they have an army of chefs all just waiting for the next food order. I was in bed and asleep by 21:00.
After a goods night sleep I opted for tangerine segments, eggs and mushroom, with coffee and toast. Then checked out and headed to the office for 08:00 for another ordinary day at the office. I left at 15:10, arrived at the airport at 15:50. Security was a breeze compared to Monday at Luton.
I wandered down to the quiet end of the airport where there is no queue for a coffee, and overheard that the Luton flight would be departing from that end of the building, so I stayed put and waited for the flight to be called. When things work out like that it is a good day.
The weather was typical for the time of year with sun followed by dramatic rain storms, I was told the weather in Luton was terrible.
I is amazing how much heat you can generate in your Blackberry battery by sending a large email, I took a picture od the clouds over the runway and after about 15 minutes of sending the back of my phone was really quite warm! It just goes to demonstrate why there is such a difference between the talk and standby times quoted by the phone manufacturers.
They announced a 20 minute delay for “operational” problems, but a check with @easyjet on Twitter got a response that it would be 10 minutes late, I wander who would be correct, the people on the ground I suspect.
First they checked our boarding cards then let us wait on the stairs, then they had us stand on the tarmac for 10 minutes, at least it was not raining! They were boarding someone in a wheelchair via the lifting vehicle, so that messed the speedy boarders up, they had to enter via the back but as they got to the steps the cattle class boards got to use the front steps. The captain announced that the operational problem was an aircraft swap, perhaps they couldn’t start the other one.
The flight was a bit bumpy as we hit turbulence closer to Luton, when we landed at 18:45 it was chucking it down with rain. Was home by 19:45 for a home made frozen curry and a naan.