Good day fellow “Costa Blancans”. Well, I have not really had oodles of time to do much pondering lately, mainly due to being packed off to the land of tea, fish and chips, Yorkshire puds and …dare I mention it?… Borisland! Despite my original promise when I wrote my debut column a few weeks ago, assuring my reader and his cat that I would not mention the “B” word, I feel I have to just throw out there now and again.
So, I toddled off for a while to the jolly old Untied ( no that isn’t a typo) Kingdom, where I have a beautiful daughter who lives in Essex and as much as I love living in Spain, I do have to have my regular dose of her infectious giggles from time to time.
When the plane touches down on that green and pleasant land, I do think about what I actually miss about England but I have to admit that, apart from a few special people, there is not that much to lure me back.
This particular trip did not start so well….. because…I had totally forgotten that Ryanair changes its baggage rules more often than I have replaced the empty loo roll! So, having packed everything into one cabin bag and made sure that my jacket pockets were big enough to store a laptop and half of Boot’s cosmetic counter, my daughter and I set off for Alicante airport, where, upon arrival, we were informed by the flashing board that our plane had been delayed. Oh well, make the most of it, it was only 55 minutes, so we could browse the Toblerone and smell the latest designer aromas at leisure in Duty Free. Having stuffed my smell-u-like €9.00 Mercadona spray and 3 bars of MasyMas fruit and nut choc into the aforesaid case, I resisted the urge to part with a few hundred Euros for some Dior and 3 bars of chocolate with two thirds of it missing!
Having also resisted the urge to buy some Rhubarb and Ginger flavoured Gin ( what’s that all about?) we toddled along and checked the flashy box again, whereupon we established that another hour had been added to the delay…. Oh well… hungry anyway, so we went and played with the Burger King one-armed-bandit , managed to order some fast food, but without the 50 cents-worth of dressing I wanted as I do not hold a degree in Sauce Communications , so had to give it up and accept that I must do battle with the free, impossible to open without the correct tools, plastic pouch of ketchup.
The fast food order, via the speedy ordering system, arrived 45 minutes later. By this time the airport was running amok with disgruntled, delayed passengers from all parts of the world and by the time we found a table, I had learned to swear in 8 different languages. The chips were worth the wait though!
By now, I assume you realise that all was not well at Alicante airport and our flight had been put back yet again. Do we know what is causing this? No of course not but hey-ho, the gate number had come up, and naturally it was the one furthest away from where we usually board, but at least we can walk off those chips.
Within just 30 minutes, we had arrived at the front of the queue, showing off how well we had packed our tiny cases with everything a woman needs for 5 days, when we were told that we should have booked priority blah blah blah and that I now had to pay and return to the naughty step at the back of the queue and wait for Mr Ryanair and his trusty card machine to come and relieve us of 40 euros, the cases, and our dignity it seems.
I cannot sign off without revealing the cause of airport mayhem, which continued for yet another 90 minutes, sitting on the plane while we waited for “Monsieur LeMisery” to allow us to fly over their airspace!
Our journey home, 5 days days later, you will not be surprised to hear, was equally as stressful and I didn’t even get to Burger King that time. But that story is for another day. In the meantime, it was worth all the hassle just to have that bowl of jellied eels !!
