A Thinking Man

I originally posted this over a year ago, but decided it was time to give it another whirl …

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These are the important lessons I learned on a recent holiday trip abroad:

1. However much time you allow yourself to get to the airport in good time, it will never be enough to account for the civil servants who chose your departure day and time to dig up the main road into the airport causing serious stressful delay.
2. However often you go to the toilet before you set out, it will never be enough to account for the long, unexpected delays you encounter on the car journey, increasing the stress and pain on arrival.
3. Although not hungry, once you get to the airport, you will always feel compelled to buy food at ten times the price it would cost you outside.
4. Having paid for your trip in advance, including all the extras of parking, insurance, and for the privilege of taking some clothes with you in a suitcase, there will always be extra charges – airport development taxes, or special charges because your case is five cm too big.  And you know that if you want to get on that plane, you will just have to pay.
5. As you pass through security, there will never be any problem on the way out, but there will always be worrying bleeps on the way back (see below).
6. When on board the plane, there will always be at least four uncontrollable children in front or behind you, hyped up on the way to Disneyland.
7. At least one of the flight attendants will always be called Melissa.
8. The aircraft toilet, which you are compelled to use out of necessity rather than choice, was designed for midgets who are able to dislocate their joints.  If you are a tall man, you stand no chance of hitting the bowl.
9. The duty-free goods on sale are nothing that you would ever dream of buying, even if you had the money.
10. The airport you land at is at least 10 times bigger than the one you departed from and has no signs anywhere telling you where to go or what to do.  And the locals all speak a different language to you.
11. Even if your suitcase is bright orange, it will still get lost.  Somehow, bright orange cases are the ones that just happen to leap off the conveyor belts.
12. When you try to ring the freephone number your pre-booked Airport Shuttle Service has provided –
a. The mobile network will be down.
b. When you try to dial the freephone number from an airport landline, the kiosk telephone will not allow you to dial freephone numbers.
c. When you do eventually get through on your mobile, you will be transferred to a company in another country who say they have never heard of your Shuttle firm and that they get a lot of calls like this.
d. If you succeed in tracking a landline number down from the small print on the paper work buried at the bottom of your (now retrieved) suitcase, you will be kept on hold for hours before they tell you where to go.
13. If you plan to dine out for a special occasion, you will find that the whole country is on holiday and that all the national restaurants are closed.  The only place available to you will be a noodle restaurant that expects you to use chop-sticks.
14. When you go to the place that you particularly want to take photographs of, your camera battery will mysteriously die on you and the spare one will be in the hotel.
15. If you foolishly decide to get rid of some of your loose change at the airport by buying a magazine or newspaper in your own language to read on the way home –
a. It will cost you at least six times what you were expecting to pay and will force you to break into another note, thereby increasing the amount of redundant change rather than reducing it.
b. The international version of your chosen newspaper will not feature the particular puzzle that was the only reason for you buying the paper in the first place.
16. On your return, the fluid for cleaning your glasses which got through security on the way out will cause your hand baggage to be publicly disembowelled while a pert young person frisks you, and while you hope that the rubber gloves don’t suddenly appear.
17. When you eventually land home, the person who would sort out the ticket for the pre-paid parking will be on a meal break.

Tags: airport, battery, camera, car park, charges, children, chopsticks, Disneyland, freephone, holiday, Humor, Humour, loose change, Melissa, noodles, plane, restaurant, security, Shuttle Service, vacation