The Second Half

We returned to Cape Town late last Saturday afternoon, after a delay of more than 5 hours on our flight from Heathrow. The events at London Airport on Friday night were like a little summary  and repeat of our Christmas back in the UK. I am not good in queues. In fact I once preached a message, where the illustration I gave about queues has long survived the true point of the sermon.  I stated that it was always a disaster to change queues. You are in a long line at the Supermarket till and see the line next to you moving rapidly forward. So you change queues, only to find that when you do,  somehow events reverse, the till jams, someone ahead of you has lost their creditcard, or the till operator has a nervous breakdown and the queue you have left now makes rapid progress, leaving you stranded in the now slower queue. Despite what has apparently been a life changing message for some - ‘don’t change queues’, I still did it myself a couple of times over Christmas, with the usual sad and predictable outcome. At Heathrow we arrived in good time and having already checked in ‘on-line’ we joined the seriously misnamed ‘fast bag drop.’ It might have been once, but now that everyone checks in online it has become the slow bag drop, whilst the queue for the few who  actually check in at Heathrow has almost disappeared. Anyhow we eventually reached the front of the queue, and moved to the desk  to be told they were only accepting passengers 2 hours before the flight. Strange! but as we were more than 2 hours ahead of the flight we moved away to a coffee shop. Timing our return to perfection we joined the queue again and this time when we reached the front were told it would still be 15 minutes before we could drop off our luggage. 15 minutes later we joined the queue yet again, only to arrive eventually at the front once more and be told that we still couldn’t proceed. Now I am a patient man…. but I did make the point that we had been round the circle 3 times already, whereupon we were shunted off into a kind of sub-queue waiting for the Cape Town flight and I was left pondering whether this could be some kind of revenge for my sermon of years ago.

Next we are told that our plane ‘is broken’. This rather alarming statement brought to mind a picture of a Jumbo jet with a wing snapped in two, or a wheel missing. It also brought to mind the Christmas present of a DVD that we gave to one of our grandchildren which caused the computer to crash every time it was inserted.  So a change of plane was needed, but we had the assurance that there would be no delay in take-off - now would you have believed that?

Eventually we arrive at the departure point and of course there is no plane - perhaps they were supergluing that wing. Eventually they find a spare jumbo jet in a garage somewhere and an hour and a half after take off time we are at last on board. Then of course it was weather problems. The British obsession with weather has been indulged this Christmas to an extreme degree. Snow meant we couldn’t go to the staff lunch, snow meant the leaders meeting was cancelled - disappointing as  we missed out on seeing so many people. On board our plane we can’t take off without being de-iced, but  because we don’t get extreme weather in the UK there are approximately only 2 de-icing machines for all the airports in the country, so we’re in for a long wait.

One of the big stories over the festive season was about the guy on a plane going to America who tried to blow it up over Detroit. Everyone is nervous, so next up we have a security scare that shuts down Heathrow completely for about an hour or so. Some drunk on an Emirates aircraft was talking about carrying a bomb - well you’ve probably heard the story on the news. Eventually, after they have sorted that incident we are back to the weather and the overworked de-icing machine which is trying to reach every  plane in Heathrow, until finally after more than 5 hours delay and at one o’ clock in  the morning we take off ice free into the freezing air around us.

Despite the weather we had a really good Christmas. It was great to see the family in Poole, to preach at Matt’s church and for Sue to go to see David and family in Chicago.

And actually it wasn’t even so bad on the plane - we were upgraded to Business Class, with acres of space and flat  6 foot beds to sleep on (obviously we drank the orange juice rather than the champagne). What a blessing.

So we’re back in Cape Town for another 5 months and delighted to be here. So don’t change queues, just keep walking around the same one and after 3 times you might get an upgrade, and after 7 times the walls of Heathrow might fall down.

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