literally another aussie in london

to belfast

Yesterday was my birthday.

I am supposed to be in Belfast right now enjoying it.

But for two days on the trot Gatwick has been snowed in. Memo to white racists, not everything white is good, see Noel Edmonds and snow.

The first day was ok as we knew early and never had to go to Gatwick, today we were not so lucky.

Our flight was at dawn, or midday, so we had to get up way before 9 in the AM.

We did that couple thing of blaming each other for the fact we had to rush to the station, and then we had to buy two different tickets to make it to the airport due to delays on the first train we bought a ticket for.

Then we arrived at the dante-esque gatwick, where we literally had to step over the corpses of deceased air travelers to arrive at the check in desk in on time only to find out our first flight was cancelled. Gatwick is a special place, more like a bus terminal with confused people bumping into shit and discounted airlines flying to obvioulsy made up places, like Faro and the Ukraine.

So then we had to line up with everyone other poor bastard, but we also called them at the same time to try and ease our pain.

While we were in the line some lady asked us to “‘mind” her bags. We declined, only because she hadn’t labeled which one had drugs and which one had bombs.

Then after my 20 minutes on the phone to a guy who’s only excuse could have been that his brain was damaged or that it was his first day on the job put us on the next flight.

It was a shame, as I was growing fond of him fumbling around the keyboard and the screeching interference that came through, which in it’s own way made more sense than him.

Then we looked for a restaurant, we found two, both of which had long waits, one because it was full, the other because it had no staff. We chose the American themed no staff restaurant.

It was great because the food was shit, overpriced, and I got to listen to Mr Bojangles and What a wonderful world three times each.

Then, even though we had been checking the board the whole time, it was via our phones that we found out that yet again we would not be travelling.  Ofcourse the counter told us to wait another 5 hours for our next flight, because it hadn’t been cancelled yet, we decided to give our trip a miss after 30 hours of our holiday had already gone.

Eventually we got home, and that was the best part of my birthday, well before I saw the dirty dozen and drank whisky.

One day I shall get to Belfast, I promise.

January 8, 2010 Posted by Jrod | living in london | food, gatwick, travel | 3 Comments