October 5/12

Today’s moment could have been the astounding scenery of Lake Geneva (Lac Leman to the Swiss), the infrequent, clear sighting of Mont Blanc on the gorgeous, warm, sunny Friday afternoon in October, or the immediate sensation of tranquility I got when we landed in Geneva because its landscape bears similarities to Vancouver.  But those are not today’s moment.

Today’s moment is the inhumane madness that is London Heathrow Airport.

Our flight out of Montreal was delayed by a half hour, and we worried that it would mean we’d miss our already-tight connection between London and Geneva.  To make things worse, the only two seats together were in the last row of the plane.  The final insult was that we reached London Heathrow at 9:20 am local time, but we had to fly around for 15 minutes in a holding pattern while the airport cleared a gate.  We decided we’d make a run for it, but were resigned to missing the flight to Geneva and trying to get on the next.

The thing about making a run for it in Heathrow is that you can’t.  It’s not possible.  Terminal 5 is one terminal, but it’s three separate halls, so if you arrive at Hall A, and you connecting flight is in Hall C, you have to catch this goofy little tram, then go to the flight connection centre, then pass through security (AGAIN), and once your through all of that, THEN, you have to hope your gate is close by, or you’re literally stopped cold by the sheer wall of people and bags going every which way but up.

We bolted for the flight connection centre, where a young BA staffer with an atrocious Cockney accent told us that our flight to Geneva was delayed, but she didn’t tell us for how long, so we still had to rush in case it was a matter of mere minutes.  At security, we faced the first juggernaut of people; it was here I noticed that the garment bag carrying our wedding attire and shoes was torn open on both sides, a side effect of the weight and the running wildly through Heathrow.  Shit!

Fuck!  Whatever.

We made it through security and went down to try to find our gate; what we found was a disturbing mass of humanity.  Oh sod a goddamn dog!  We dodged and weaved, but slow, elderly people or dawdling, leisurely holiday-makers kept wildly shifting course and getting in my way, the wily bastards, so I lost Etienne three times.  Finally we found our gate, Lucky Number 13.   

And the plane had only just arrived from Geneva.  And it was being groomed for turnaround.  So we had almost a half hour to wait!

I’d say ‘Screw you, Heathrow!’ but we have to transit through on our way back, so I’d rather not tempt fate.

Order to the Heathrow chaos…

…Wish you were here.