Stuff happens

Yesterday, in furtherance of his quest to return to work urgently after a three-week trip to the UK (14 days of it spent in quarantine), I took my son Barry to Terminal Five at Heathrow so that he could catch the one available flight that was going to Madrid.

Or rather, I didn’t do that.

The troubles and reverses that life deals you from time to time never cease to amaze me.

You agree to undertake what – on the face of it – seems a perfectly straightforward errand or task, e.g. drive your son to Heathrow so he can catch a plane, an imposition to your day that ordinarily would have cost you a round-trip of no more than an hour to 90 minutes maximum.

The expedition stutters into life. Barry, never one for punctuality, takes ten minutes longer to get ready to depart than agreed the night before (your author, of course, was ready to depart half an hour early).

This, however, not an issue. Anticipating it, I had set him a time that had an inbuilt 20-minute contingency so that we would still arrive well in advance of his deadline.

Out into the south west London traffic and down the A316 towards the M3 … the plan being to nip onto the M25 going clockwise towards Heathrow and then, within ten miles, come off at the junction that takes you straight to Terminal Five.

Simples.

Not on this occasion. Within half a mile of passing through the most southern Twickenham roundabout – now about three miles from the official beginning of the M3 – we hit a total, three-lane gridlock.

Barry immediately exclaims “I’m going to miss my flight!”

I tried to calm him down, assuring him that it is probably no more than a five-minute hold up in the early morning fog.

He goes on the internet and announces different.

There will at least an hour’s delay in reaching the M25. There had been a major accident involving four cars overnight at 2.00am on the A316, just before the start of the M3, and the police accident team were still dealing with the aftermath (it was now 8.35am, six and a half hours later).

Within five minutes of sitting in the jam, Barry had had enough.

“That’s it, if I am to get my flight I need to do something …”

With that, he grabbed his bag from the back seat – all he was travelling with – got out of the car, which was surrounded by solid traffic in all three lanes – walked to the side of the road, vaulted over a concrete wall, and disappeared.

About two hours later, after I had finally managed to reach a junction and retrace my steps home, I made contact with Barry again.

He had at last persuaded the airport authorities to allow him to board his plane.

After leaving my car he had quickly realised that getting to Terminal Five by car in time (e.g. an Uber taxi) was out of the question. He therefore identified the nearest bus stop that would get him to a station going to Heathrow.

He ran two miles to said bus stop, jumped on a bus, then boarded a train to Heathrow, and then the “connecting train” that runs to Terminal Five.

Even then his necessary Covid-19 test (negative) papers were not in order. There was a missing “Q” number. After tense negotiations with the Emsworth venue that had conducted his test, Barry managed to persuade the airport authorities to accept whatever assurances Emsworth could give and he was then allowed to join his flight to Madrid.

But that wasn’t the end of it. The plane then stood for 75 minutes on the tarmac before it took off!

Last I spoke to Barry he was midway through his four-hour wait at Madrid Airport to board his forwarding flight to Palma at 7.45pm local time last night.