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posted by tim caynes » Thursday July 03, 2008 » Permalink
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if its 6am on sunday I must be getting a national express coach to london heathrow where after 4 hours trying to adjust a seat belt I'll have to descend to the bowels of terminal 1 to find the travelator which doesn't work to get me underneath terminal 2 where I can just about squeeze through the barriers to get to the vanishing point of tunnels along which I have to walk for hours looking at the same globally correct advertising hoarding where HSBC proclaim how knowledgeable they are about cultural differences (art? rubbish? rubbish? art? culture? nonsense? culture? nonsense? embarrassing? embarrassing? etc.) until I round a corner at terminal 3 where I can just about squeeze through the barriers to get to the heathrow express (next train: forever) which is free! to me as I've already walked 7 miles to get here and I eventually board the train and sit down so that standing up is something to do and when I step out and walk about 17 miles to the end of a new tunnel designed to look like the old ones and fumble with the eroded buttons on the lift to terminal 4 which seems like a trade lift and I half expect to end up in the back of a kitchen or something I'm suddenly, albeit after 6 hours, at the check-in area.
I look for the longest line in the building which is generally the 'fast bag drop' line for those of us who checked in online i.e. everyone and now are entitled to take the speedy option but notwithstanding the tortuous non-linear unaccellerated journey that brought me to this great hall of doom I'm told as I try to join the end of the queue that actually I'm too early to be part of the speedy fast bag drop online check-in process and if I check-in now they will lose my hold luggage which admission rather sets the tone for the journey and leaves me with an uneasy feeling that I'm being laughed at by a security guard watching sunday lunchtime CCTV picking out dolts with home-made sandwiches standing by WHSmith for their enjoyment.
after an interminalable 15 minutes I approach the roped-off queuing system as though it was a blind corner in metal gear solid and wait patiently until the BA staff have zzz appearing over their heads in little bubbles and I crawl under the barrier while holding my breath tanked up on tamazepam while a small japenese technician flirts with me in my brainpiece until I reach the counter whereupon I approach the check-in staff from a 90 degree angle and lob my passport onto the desk as I rip off my false face. nobody noticed. good. yes. 31A. its a window seat.
duh. so keen to get the window seat I committed a schoolboy error and didn't calculate the placement of sun in sky versus direction of travel over time of days divided by the number I first thought of plus elephants in denmark and will spend 10 hours pointing my camera directly at the sun. at least I know which seat to book on the way back. which will be in the dark. dammit. the flickr window seat please shame of it.
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