« Tel Aviv to London, by way of Zurich | Main | Thoughts about the trip en route to Baltimore »
November 12, 1995
Heading to Gatwick
We awoke to a wonderfully dreary London morning and were greeted by an English breakfast of fried eggs, fatty bacon, and cold toast. I absorbed the toast and several cups of coffee, while Susanne nursed herself over a bowl of cornflakes and some juice. After eating, we packed up our bags, checked out, and caught the tube to Victoria Station. It was just before 9am and we barely caught the top-of-the-hour train to Gatwick, which was good news because workers on the train tracks had cut trips to only one an hour and extended the usually 30-minute trip to over 45 minutes.
At Gatwick we had a brief scare when the British Air rep said Susanne's name wasn't in the computer. After a few seconds of Susanne's evil eye, the man promptly produced a boarding pass and apologized to her. Inside the terminal, we grabbed our first fountain sodas in over two weeks and split a blackcurrant scone. We had a few minutes in duty free shop before Susanne's flight was called for boarding. I walked with her as far as I could until a security man tried to shuffle her into the closed off gate area. We looked at him and said we'd like to say goodbye to each other first, and he just stood there, looking like we'd just shake hands and that'd be that. After a moment or so he got the hint when other passengers started to laugh, so he handed back Susanne's ticket.
We walked a bit off to the side and made our goodbyes as quick as possible, for in the five years we've known each other, whether we were dating at the time or not, we have never been quite good at saying goodbye in relative haste. And knowing that we'd probably see each other in January or February, that made it a lot easier, so we hugged, kissed, and Susanne headed back to the man who wanted to shuffle her into the gate. I went back to the main terminal to buy Drambuie and a case of ale at the duty free shop. After marking two minutes of silence with the rest of the UK for Remembrance Day, I entered the gate and awaited my flight.
Posted by acarvin at November 12, 1995 11:30 AM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
