» Airport Stories

Friends reunited.... just.
A couple of years ago I met up with an old schoolfriend whom I hadn't seen for about 20 years. We got on great and arranged a weekend trip to Amsterdam. She lives oop north and I'm in London so I book the hotel and depart from Heathrow whilst she leaves from Newcastle two hours later.

When I got to Heathrow KLM informed me there was bad weather over Schipol so the flight would be delayed. 40mins later the board suddenly announces last call for my flight. Shit! I hadn't even gone through Security and there was a huge line of people waiting to be processed. So I stand in line until I suddenly hear my name being called over the PA system. The plane was waiting for ME! So I ran to the front of the queue, apologising as I went and walked through the sensor... which bleeped. OK, remove everything metal, go through again...BLEEP. "Could you step to one side sir?" Oh fuck. Finally convince them I'm not carrying a weapon and run onto one of those moving walkways which whisks me straight past the gate where my plane is. By the time I had run all the way back I was so breathless I couldn't speak. The guy at the door to the plane just looked at me and said "Mr. Don'ttouchme! I presume."

Cut to Schipol. I settled down to get some serious booze in me until my friend arrived 2 hours later. Except she didn't. So I waited for the next flight from Newcastle. She's not on that either. In the end I spent 6 hours waiting for her and eventually decided I had been spectacularly stood up. I mean... letting me go to another country to do that is a bit extreme.

So I give up and tootle off to the hotel to console myself with large amounts of dope. At 11:30pm I get a call from her saying she is in the lobby so I go down to meet her. It turns out she had driven to the airport leaving little time pre-flight. When she got there she realised she had left her tickets at home so drove like a loon back there. More speeding back to the airport where she is clocked by plod and given a speeding fine. She missed her flight but got the next one. On arrival at Schipol she got lost the moment she left the plane and ended up exiting via the wrong departure gate. This explains why I didn't see her as I was at the correct one. Rather than wander round looking for me she decides that staying in one place will make it easier for me to find her. Except thats exactly what I was doing too. She decides to go to the hotel after a while and suddenly realises she doesn't know which one we were booked in. So she has to call her sister to break in to her house and get the email I had sent to her telling her all the details. She then goes to the rail link at the airport and gets on the wrong train!

We did, however, have a great time. But to add insult to injury her flight home was diverted due to technical problems and she ended up in Paris :-)
(Sun 5th Mar 2006, 11:46, More)

» Heckles

Inadvertant heckle
A while back some friends and I went to the Fright Night festival. One of the films we watched was "Romasanta" and after the film we sat loudly taking the piss out of it and calling it rubbish. At one point I recall complaining that there were no lesbian nuns in it!

At that point our host for the festival bounds onto stage and announces a big treat: the director of the film (Francisco Plaza) was here and was now going to come onto the stage to answer audience questions.

A man sitting right in front of us got up and joined the host on stage.

We cringed mightily and scarpered before he came back.
(Thu 6th Apr 2006, 23:00, More)