Boarding was imminent. A wonderful holiday in the USA had been enjoyed, our first long-haul trip since the Chicken Pox Holiday Of Doom. And here we were, watching the elite Group 1 boarders beginning to line up at the gate, the kids were riding the last bumps of carbohydrate-fuelled energy in anticipation of a peaceful, wake-up-and-you’re-there overnight flight. No delays, no issues, we were practically home and dry with nary a pox in sight…

Then it happened. The proclamation of doom:

“We regret to inform passengers that Flight UA146 to London Heathrow has been cancelled.” And – just to complete the sense of impending dystopia – “This is because we have no pilot.”

Thus began a very long night indeed.

10 – 10.30pm: Entering the Concourse of Innocence

We become the rear-end of a plane-full of people flocking from what was (of course) the furthest gate of the airport to the baggage claim basement. Husband in position to reclaim baggage a safe distance from the children – now settled on a bench and plugged into various tablets – I trundle upstairs to locate the customer service queue.

At first all I can see is a long line ending in what I’m hoping are several straight queues going directly to each customer service desk. Doesn’t look too bad, thinks I. Reader, I had fallen prey to the Concourse of Innocence.

As you can see, the realisation that we are, in fact, queuing just to join the dreaded zig-zag queue aligns with the first phase of Really Fucking Angry Actuallys, closely followed by the Murmurings of Conspiracy. Did you know, for instance, that when they say a plane has ‘technical difficulties’ or ‘no pilot’ it actually means something utterly different that is all to do with taxes and government funding and Covid? No? Well, you still don’t.

11.30pm – 12am: Breaching the Stanchion of Unwanted Facts

Still queuing. I receive a text from the airline informing us we’ve been auto-booked on the next available flight… at 11pm tomorrow. Angry phone calls with much over-enunciation can be heard from all around as others try to bump up flight times/ put themselves on standby/ speak to a human. The conspiracy mutterings have given way now to Unwanted Facts, such as how long the teenage boy several people back estimates we will still be queuing, based on how long we’ve already been queuing, which is, quite frankly, a calculation that we could all do without as we approach the Junction of Endless Sadness. Also, it’s a stanchion queue, not a zig-zag.

12- 12.30am: False Joviality belies A Gully of Determination

The surprisingly upbeat American couple behind me share that their first flight had already been cancelled and that this was their standby, they have not received any texts rebooking them onto another flight, have lost all of their check-in luggage and two non-refundable nights in a fancy shmancy London hotel. It is, I am soberly informed, also time for the husband’s medication. But apparently things could be worse.

‘Hey! HEY!‘

The bellow comes from a woman in boisterous tie-dye standing amidst the coveted Intersection of Preparedness. The queue bristles in anticipation, but alas she hasn’t fallen victim to the Hysteria-Of-A-Terribly-Long-Wait, she’s just trying to catch the attention of a woman walking nearby with her small dog. Still, she yells as if her very life depends on it.

‘HEY WHAT IS YOUR DOG’S NAME?’ [At this point, I’m afraid my memory fails me. I believe it was something incongruous like Cropper or Medford.] ‘WHAT KIND OF DOG IS SHE?’ [Don’t know, something small.] ‘SHE IS SO CUTE, HOW OLD IS SHE, CAN I PET HER?’ [No. No she could not.]

It is around this point that the memory of being stuck very far from home and wanting nothing more than to go home comes crashing back. And we enter the Gully of Determination Never to Leave Home Again Ever. Husband, meanwhile, informs me via WhatsApp that he has located all luggage except the car seats. As we are never leaving home again, I am fine with this.

12.45am: A Sidebar of Suspicious Stench

We have, at this point, been queuing for over two hours and the cracks are beginning to show. As are the odours emanating from them. One girl throws caution to the wind and gabbles madly at the guy next to her in the queue: ‘CanyoukeepmyspotpleaseIreallygottago.’ And is gone, betwixt the stanchion barriers in a flash of pungent air before he can so much as mutter a bemused, ‘Um…‘

The rest of us cross and clench our orifices and avoid one another’s eyes.

12.45 – 1am: Entering the Convergence of Really, Really Fucking Angry Now, Actually

…amid the palpable nervous aromas of anticipation, we enter the final stretch of queuing. There is much agreement, nodding and shared eyebrow-raising here, but really, there is no Spirit of Dunkirk or even any sort of illusion of the same. We are all united in our waiting, sympathetic to those who clearly have it worse (man with walker, couple separated from fresh underpants, a family from Guam who are hauling about 15 packing crates on their trolleys) but at the same time, there is a mutual understanding that we have waited – endured – for so long now that one will not hesitate to Cut A Bitch if they so much as think about nudging into one’s place in line*.

Mumbling what we are going to say once we cross the oddly wide arena of space which separates us, the cattle, from our herders at their desks, we take comfort that no one seems to be coming away from the kiosks with too much anger or strife. (With the exception of one tiny woman who argues with a dogged fury that appears to be unsatiated by anything less than the poor customer service rep vaulting her desk, hoiking the woman onto her back and flying her across the planet herself)

1.14am: And finally…

Finally, my time comes to cross the border of baleful glares, the arena of woe, the final frontier of despair… And suddenly, time resumes its normal pace. No, we cannot book an earlier flight without subjecting three unsuspecting sods to the seats neighbouring our children for seven confined hours overnight. No, the customer service rep cannot book a hotel for us, but we should be able to claim the expense back, within reason. Yes, here are baggage tags for our (still only half-claimed) luggage and yes, some food and drink vouchers for the next 24 hours (though good luck finding anything open at this point except Dunkin).

Thus freed from the Stanchions of Woe, armed with vouchers and tags, I rejoin the rest of my crew to enter a different phase of hell: trying and failing to locate car seats, trying and failing to secure a hotel room for the 5 of us, trying to find the bloody airport shuttle service for the eventual Holiday Inn we do book, discovering that there are, in fact, three Holiday Inns in the vicinity of this particular airport… Luckily, the one we wind up at just before 3am does have a record of my booking. What it doesn’t have is the room I booked.

I could go on, ranting about how we were charged $400 for a room that wouldn’t sleep half of us for what little of the night remained, how spectacularly twattish the world of airport hotel gate-keeping is at 3am even when half your family is under ten and unconscious. But I won’t. We got through it, we caught our flight home the next evening (and, remarkably, so did all 3 car seats), the jetlag has worn off, a reimbursement request has been made and the rest of the summer holidays loom ahead. Everything is fine.

Except the weather. The fuck is going on there?

*Now that it’s no longer 1am and one is no longer ensconced in the Stanchions of Apathy, I do hope that nice American couple made it onto their cruise. And that they found their underwear.

PS…

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