London Airport

A guy from the South Pole wearing manpris

Before I begin, just for the record, the score is manpris: 3, mullets: 2.

            I’m writing this from the bed and breakfast in London at about 11:30 pm. First opportunity I’ve really had to/felt well enough to.

            We disembarked and were through immigration fine. We approached the baggage claim and Kyle said, “I see my bag! I’m not kidding!” Rejoicing, we picked up Kyle’s bag and waited for mine. After all, they went through exactly the same thing, right? We waited…, and waited…, and with every bag being birthed onto the belt, my heart sank a little lower. Then we heard our names over the loudspeaker. As Kyle went to customer service, I stayed as the last few bags trickled out, and thought, “No…that can’t be it.” And then Kyle called me over. As I feared, my luggage had been “misplaced”, found, but was delayed. The nice customer service guy said soothingly that it would be delivered tomorrow. So…3 days in the same clothes.

            By the time we got through with that, the customs area was deserted. In fact, the entire airport was zombieland. Unlike U.S. airports, everything closes down after midnight in Heathrow and, seeing as how we were the last flight in, everything was empty…

            We fumbled around with phones for awhile, leaving our bed and breakfast and family very expensive assurances that we were ok and on our way. We bought some internet and Kyle checked his email. Our Bed and breakfast, Charlotte House, said that the night porter would let us in. So we trucked down to the underground…to find the ticket office full of construction workers, but no one selling tickets, and everything locked. Our plane was in so late, there was actually no way that we could have made a train out, especially dealing with customer service. So, we looked up what time the tube opens (5:00 am) and resigned ourselves to setting up true hobo camp somewhere in the airport.       

     I wanted to bed down in the multi-faith prayer room. Kyle felt uncomfortable doing so. So, the only other option was the benches at the arrival’s gate where a guy was drilling up tiles, and the other few abandoned souls were milling around. We watched a couple of episodes of Fawlty Towers off of Kyle’s laptop. Then I curled up on the bench trying to avoid the armrests and ignore the sound of drilling. I woke up

to the sound of one of the other people being questioned by airport security (“Where are you from?” “The South Pole!”) and realized that I had slept on someone else’s used Q-tip. We dragged ourselves to the tube, where ticket agents kindly helped us two airport zombies purchase and swipe passes (it was probably hilarious watching our exhausted fumblings). We rode the tube with some other early risers and their 2 beer breakfasts. We stumbled to the bed and breakfast…to find no one there. Too late for the night porter, too early for reception. I wrapped myself in Kyle’s airline blanket and dozed off on the wet stoop. About ½ hour later, the Indian Bed and breakfast worker discovered us, heard our story (Oh, YOU’RE the two!), and practically tucked us in to bed. I passed out for six hours.