My wife's mother is not very well so we decided to leave our car in Ireland for a few months while she went back and forth to visit. It was a cunning plan to save the ghastly expense of either hiring cars every two weeks or ferrying the car over each trip.
On her last visit she left the car parked by the roadside outside Knock airport.
But eight weeks later she had not been back to visit - her mother was now very comfortable in a home and chatted to almost daily on the phone.
I decided I had to go and rescue the car - would it still be there? in one piece? would it start? would the tires be flat? would the wheels still turn? would it be up to its axles or worse in the bog?
Andrew offered to come with me for his first visit to Ireland and I jumped at the offer so after a number of last minute bookings and shenanigans off we went.
Oh dear, oh dear!
First with Ryan Air - I had planned to do online check-in - there I sat at midnight on Friday and lo and behold - you have to have passport details to check-in online. The web site hadn't warned me when booking, nor in the confirmation email and I didn't have Andrew's details and at midnight, very sensibly he was in bed and asleep, unlike me, so he wasn't answering his phone. I abandoned the attempt.
Now at Liverpool John Lennon airport - after queuing at the check-in desk we are sent off to queue at the ticket desk. There I discover that I at least, in possession of my own passport, could have checked in online on Friday night. That wasn't mentioned at all on the check-in pages. "We cannot take complaints here about Ryan Air - we don't work for them" the cashier says sitting in a booth clearly labelled "Ryan Air". There must be a way in which one can play that in reverse, i.e. to my advantage. Any ideas? how to label something or someone one way and yet be another thing when you get jobsworths like that. After stumping up two times £8 we go back to check-in and get our boarding cards.
Next step - security: Ha!
Here I got off lightly though I cannot say as much for my Suunto watch with built in electronic compass. The security metal detector didn't do that a lot of good. And I didn't empty any of my pockets out so I walked through the thing with all bells ringing.
"Stand here sir (and let me give you a very undignified patting down). What's this? didn't he ask you to empty your pockets, tut, tut...". So we empty them all out, not a trivial task as there are seven pockets in my walking trousers alone, and contents go into another plastic tray handed up to the other end of the conveyor. Mercifully I still had my belt on.
So now I have three items coming through the conveyor - carry-on bag, coat and walking boots in a tray and another tray with wallet, purse, smart phone etc trailing way behind. As we all know, this is a nerve racking time, watching out for the wallet and phone to get through the scanner in case someone else walks off with them. When they are significantly separated from your other possessions this is a real problem.
I managed it all right - with particular relief that the man with x-ray vision had decided that my collection of tin-whistles in my carry-on bag were not dangerous weapons!
But where was Andrew? The toothpaste police had got him! Off with his head! But he fought on to have his deodorant retained - and won that one. Not a liquid you see, but solid crystal!
