The Archive

Swede dreams are made of this

Ok, so I guess I’d better do the honours and write up the lads holiday, as has become traditional.

It was a slightly contracted trip this time- a mere 5 days of madness, into which we managed to squeeze all the drinking, sightseeing, financial recklessness and drinking that we’d normally do in 10.

It was intense. But then again, as we kept reminding ourselves, “This is a sprint, not a marathon. Do NOT pace ourselves.”

It didn’t start well mind. We all managed to get to the airport in good time (an unprecedented effort from the group who have perfected the ‘sweaty airport dash’).

We should have guessed really from this that all was not as it seemed. Turned out our flight was cancelled.

Bugger.

Still, we managed to keep our good humour, despite staring down the barrel of a possible night not, as we had planned, drinking with ice-blondes in Sweden, but in the Milton Keynes Travelodge.

We managed to keep our spirits up as we queued for the first 2 hours or so. There was only a couple of hairy moments, in fact.

The first came when a chap decided that just in front of us (where, admittedly there was a gap left to allow people to pass across the queue) a man decided to join the line.

Pellet (who is a tall and imposing chap) ‘nipped over’.

“Excuse me mate, the back of the queue is that way” he pointed back. Way back.
“What is 'queue'?” asks the man, in perfectly enunciated English. That ain’t gonna work pal.

Pellet pointed again. Eyebrows were raised.

Adamski joined him. More pointing.

“How long is it?” asked the man.
“About two hours,” they reply.
“That is a long time,” he comments.
“Yes it is,” they reply.

The impasse continued for a while, with Wig also joining in the tag-team admonishing of the plucky jumper.

Eventually he saw reason, which was a bit of a shame as it meant we were not able to deploy and of the later-conceived lines…

“What is ‘queue’? It’s what’s about to kick you all round the airport, mate.”
“Well, you can either go to the back and spend 2 hours waiting, or stay here and wait for the rest of your life – which will be about 20 seconds.”

Still, it all passed off without proper aggro.

Later on though (about 4 hours total at this time) and at a new and exciting queue, we found ourselves behind a very agitated businessman.

He kept arguing with the poor woman behind the counter. She was simply not able to help him any more (clearly she was not hiding an available plane under the counter, waiting for someone to shout loudly enough before she produced it with a flourish.)

We started to help a little, calling from just behind him,

“Give it up mate, it’s over.”
“Move on and give those of us with half a chance of getting a flight a go.”
“Arse” (well, it was after 4 hours of queueing, what do you expect, Oscar Wilde?)

It was after this that the bloke seemed to go a bit mental, shouting at the woman on the desk. (Now on reading what he said, it’s important you get the full experience, think of Peter Sellers doing the French detective blended with Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street).

“You have harassed me. You will hear more about this. You will know my name! You will know the name Almeida!”

Well of course she will, you just gave her your passport you muppet.

We spent most of the next 5 days doing hilarious Almeida impressions and wondering if we could have claimed to have misheard his name as Al Quaeda and kicked him to death without repercussions.

There was no need to vent, however, as the lovely lady not only gave us a voucher for a ‘coffee’ (4 beers), she also got us onto the next flight to Stockholm.

Hurrah!

posted by Peter The Great @ 3:46 PM