HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (34) - A TALE OF THREE AIRPORTS

NOVEMBER 14-15

Strange "dotted" windows at SFO which
really bugger up your "sunset" pictures

Obviously, because it's me, we still managed to arrive at the airport far, far earlier than was strictly necessary, although this did mean that we were able to drop off Beattie the Hire Car with little fuss and ceremony, and get the checking-in process sorted relatively easily, once the desk actually opened.

Naturally, the security is still pretty tight, but nothing like as severe as when you're trying to get into the country, we noticed.

Pretty soon we were meandering through the Departure Zone, where, after perusing the myriad food options on offer, we settled for a rather disappointing sandwich each from an outlet with spectacular views of what we hoped might be a rather beautiful sunset to send us on our way.

As we nibbled slowly at the dry sourdough, so that the excessively long time that we were spending at their table didn't seem too obvious, I noticed a couple reading at a nearby table. He was busy at his laptop whilst she was reading a copy of "How To Win As A Step-Family" which seemed to me to sum up a large part of American society in a nutshell.

The clouds were gathering, darkness was falling, and, after reflecting at length about our trip, we decided that it was time to dispose of the rest of our sandwiches, and saunter down to the waiting area for Gate A11 and listen to the never ending, steady, rhythmic drum beat of the escalator, which sounded for all the world like the sound you used to hear below decks in those Roman galleys from the movies, as the passengers for our Boeing 747 gathered to do what pre-flight passengers will do - talk about how smashed they intend to get on Tequila, or stare at screens without ever looking up, or listen to the increasingly desperate crew of the packed flight to Seattle trying to get anyone to be parted from their stuff for a couple of hours.

Eventually, our flight was called - VS020 (SFO>LHR) because night had fallen here.

At first, it all looked so very promising; For the first time ever, our seats were called in the first batch following the First Class, Premium or "People With Difficulties" groups and we sped down the ramp towards an almost empty plane, and my first ever time on a 747.

The seats that we'd been allocated, which were rather worryingly an "A" and a "C", but turned out to be just two seats together, and the "comfort packs" in the seat pockets in front of us looked suitably impressive but, unfortunately, it all rather went downhill from there for us, not least because the headphones didn't work and, despite the fact that Virgin Media in the UK seem eager to sell us more telly to watch, there was not one thing on their Entertainments choice that I considered remotely watchable.

Instead, I watched the flight data screen for ten hours, counting down the time until this torture would end, and mulling over the fact that all three of the meal options about which the menu seemed to get so very excited looked very underwhelming to me.

Meanwhile... How can a plane so huge seem so very, very small...???

I spent ten hours behind a Legroom Vampire being served depressing food by staff that seemed unduly surly for much of the time. At some point during the "fake night-time" that they were trying to create as life clawed back the eight hours we'd gained on our flight the other way and swallowed the night whole, I managed to spill a whole cup of orange squash (NOT juice!!!) all over my lap because the Legroom Vampire was so far back that my table tilted in the darkness, and when I went to soak it up and rant about Legroom Vampires to a floppy-haired fellow passenger, we had what I thought was a pretty interesting conversation about the perils of Economy Travel only for me to realise afterwards that he thought that he was chatting me up, if his farewell of "You'll be another of those married guys, huh?" was any clue.

I really do never notice this sort of thing at all, but maybe I look more impressive in the dark...

The final straw, and an abiding memory of the flight, was the unflushed turd that I came face-to-face with during one of my "comfort breaks" so that, after that, the coming of the dawn, followed immediately by the lousy breakfast, was never going to help.

I mean, I know it's Economy... but really...?

And so we arrived at Heathrow and gladly disembarked, and, because we were on a connecting flight, had to keep on following the Purple Signs, which meant that, after the Beloved delayed us with a much-needed "comfort break" of her own (during which even the last of the aircrew overtook us), we were split off from pretty much everyone else who'd been on the plane and rather confused because we seemed to be walking through corridors forever without ever reaching a passport check.

Eventually we reached some doors which, after an endless few minutes in which we heard two porters discussing the relative merits of Manchester United's something or other (Ah! We're HOME…), opened up directly onto a bus which took us across to another terminal and still nobody had asked to look at our passports, which seemed to feel decidedly odder and odder to us after the perpetual checks made to get into the States. I did wonder, briefly, whether this whole "getting on a bus" scenario offered ample opportunities for anyone entering the country illegally to chance making a run for it, but thought that it probably didn't.

Anyway, we finally arrived at a desk with a very short queue where someone did cheerily ask to look at our passports, and we were finally back on home soil without incident.

Happily, unlike our experience as transit passengers travelling into America, we didn't have to take the time to identify and re-check our baggage this time, and instead we ventured into the vast Mall that was the Departure Lounge and sought out some proper food (and a usually quite difficult to get hold of comic I suddenly remembered being after).

I know that we did eat, but I was so tired, I now have no recollection what it was, although, strangely, I do recall the Beloved's flatbread order.

A couple of hours later on in what was already late Saturday afternoon, our Aer Lingus flight to Manchester was called and we boarded a much roomier little aircraft and were up in the air for about 35 minutes during which we saw our second sunset in about sixteen hours and the Beloved got chatting to the young man sharing our set of three seats who was returning home from working on the very same vast cruise liner that we had both remarked upon when we spotted it at the dockside when our little tour of the Bay Area was coming to its end.

Soon we were back on the ground at Manchester, and, happily, our luggage had also made it, despite the attentions of the Transport Security Authorities at San Francisco Airport as we were later to discover from the note they left us.

Of course, we'd departed two weeks earlier on an International flight, but had returned on a Domestic one, and so, after buying some bread and milk and a convenient Mini-Market, (and not having the brain power left to work out if there was another method of getting there), we had to make the long, long - and endless seeming - walk back to Terminal 2 in order to catch a shuttle bus back to the T2 Long-Stay Parking where we'd parked the car, whilst I mentally re-jigged my mind to my more "normal" driving position, and dug out the strange orange chipped disc which - we hoped - would still allow us to get out of the car park without any further bother.

Happily, the car was exactly where we left it and, even more happily, its tyres were not flat and it started first time and, despite having a fairly sleepy head on my shoulders by this stage, I was able to safely drive us home.