15 December 11

Something to Declare

WELL, IT FINALLY HAPPENED. I missed a flight. I fly quite a bit for my job. Less than some jobs (pilots, birds, Superman) but probably more than most. Yet until the other day, I’d never encountered that sinking feeling when you realise the plane you were meant to be on is now in the air – minus you.

They say trouble, like musketeers and amigos, comes in threes. I can now confirm this to be true.

Trouble #1: My wife’s passport is missing. We’re in Spain and are meant to be flying to Morocco in the morning. We decide that Eva either a) left it in the office of the hire car company four days ago or b) lost it in an unspecified location where it will never be found, unless it falls into the hands of a master criminal who will clone her identity and use it to perform a bank robbery for which Eva will be blamed and incarcerated in a maximum security prison. Personally, I prefer option a.

Trouble #2: The next day, trying to find the airport, we get very lost. There are different types of lost. There’s “oops, wrong turn, might be five minutes late” lost and then there’s Lord Lucan lost. We invented a whole new even worse third category, which manifested itself in Eva weeping and banging the steering wheel and us flagging down construction workers and begging them to climb in the car and direct us.

False hope. We find the hire car office. They’ve got the passport! We’re even in good time for our flight. We’re going to Morocco, everything’s going to be OK (spoiler alert: it’s not).

Trouble #3: We are through security. We even have time to pick up some water. I bend down to put the bottles in my rucksack, then get up and – whoomph! That sound effect doesn’t really do it justice. I have walked headfirst into a metal pole. Eva actually starts laughing until she realises that I’m doubled over in pain and have a lump the size of a small mountain in Wales. I’m out for the count. Cue medics asking “How many fingers am I holding up?”, an ice pack and bye bye, there goes our flight.

I suppose it had to happen sometime, that first missed flight, but I expected it to be the result of a delayed train or sleeping in, or a missing passport or getting lost finding the airport, but not that I would walk straight into a metal pole. It’s just too... Mr Bean. On the plus side, our hotel in Morocco didn’t charge us because they said the reason we hadn’t come was so funny. Ha ha. Ouch.

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