Departure

The time has come to write about the trip. Actually, the time came a couple of days ago, but then when I was looking for a map of Heathrow airport, the computer crashed, and the stupid autosave didn't work, so I got bored. This, dear reader, is what I go through for you.

We had to get a certificate of health from the vet. This seemed to be the most feeble and unofficial looking piece of paper that I've ever seen, something I could have knocked up at home on a laser printer a few minutes (if my laser printer at home didn't put big black stripes on everything, but that's another story). The vet poked at the cat for a few minutes, I handed over 45 quid, and I got my piece of paper.

And off we went to London. I've already dealt with that, so let's jump ahead to Monday morning. The flight was at 1:30, and it was suggested we check in 4 hours early, so we set off at 8am, from Vauxhall. About an hour and a half later, (self, S, A, D, Grandma and cat) arrived at Heathrow. I drove the hire car back to the hire car place, while the others manouevred the two trolleys, piled high with stuff, into departures.

I returned, and we went to check in. You know how whenever you get on an aeroplane, you go to check in, chuck your bags on the conveyor belt, tell them you've got no bombs and are not being unwittingly employed as a drug mule, and get on your way a couple of minutes later, boarding card in hand? And while you're in the queue (I have to learn to say 'line' or Americans call me quaint) there's a family that seem to have been clogging up one of the check in desks for, like, an hour? Well, we were that family.

We had to put our 6 suitcases on, that wasn't too tricky. We had to partially dismantle the car seats and get the labels stuck on and take them to the funny shaped luggage place. Then we had to deal with the cat. We handed over our very unofficial looking piece of paper, then handed over our 70 quid. They seemed to doubt that the shoddy piece of paper really was all we needed - someone more senior was fetched, who fetched someone else more senior, and they eventually decided the piece of paper was OK.

They also decided that the box was IATA approved (I don't know what that means, but we spent 25 pounds (notice that I'm using a keyboard without a pound sign) on a box that had a label that said "IATA approved". They fetched a lot of stickers that said "Live Animal" and "This way up", and stuck them on. It was quite hard to stick them on without covering up the airholes, and the airholes (on all 4 sides) are one of the things that make it IATA approved.

Then I had to carry the cat into the bowels of Heathrow Airport somewhere, and man with a sniffer machine sniffed around the cat box - mainly focussing on the underneath, he didn't put it inside. Maybe he was convinced it was actually a cat. The sniffer was a bit like a hand held vacuum cleaner, with a bit of filter paper in the hose. The filter paper was removed, and it was taken away to be inspected.

Given the lack of hand luggage I was wearing almost all the clothes I had, so I hoped that the trickles of sweat running down my face didn't arouse suspicion.

The cat was declared explosives free, so I took it back to check-in, offered it food and water (I had to sign a declaration that it had been offered food and water - not that it felt at all like eating). The man at the check in gave us odious warnings of what would happen when we arrived - vets would be summoned, out of hours, and we'd have to pay, and all sorts of dreadful stuff.

The cat was taken away, and we went to join the queue for security screening.

Normally the queue for security is a bit long, but this was impressive. It went all the way through departures, up some steps, across a bridge, along a long corridor, and into the car park, where it wound up and down once. We found Grandma and she went to buy supplies of sandwiches.

People were wandering up and down the queue calling particular flights and pulling people out of the queue to take them to the front - I waited for ours, but it never came.

We got to the front of the queue, after what felt like forever, but was about 1 o'clock. I took off my belt, because sometimes that sets off the alarms, but left my mobile phone in my pocket.

We got through security to see the screen saying "last call" for our flight, when someone greeted us, and asked what flight we were on. I told him, expecting him to rush us in some way to the departure gate. He started to tell me what duty free stuff we could buy, so I punched him out of the way, and saw that sign that estimated a 20 minute walk to our gate.

We picked up A & D and ran, as much as we could, and walked directly onto the plane. (First time I've ever done that).

When the stewardess saw the boys, she asked if they wanted to see the flight deck, which was something I thought only happened in stories. The boys went into the cockpit, took over the plane, and demanded milk and ... no, not really. They sat in the co-pilot's seat, and the pilot asked if we had a camera. I didn't (obviously, I didn't even have a belt on), so he took a photo with his camera, and asked for my email address, so he could email it.

Which, about a week later, he did. Which I thought was incredibly nice of him. So, FLY UNITED AIRLINES, 'COS THEY"RE REALLY NICE.

Then we sat down and the plane took off.