Our old people’s travel cards do not open the barriers at Gatwick airport train station. My wife flashes me an I-told-you-so look, because she told me so, shortly after we left the house. Things have not started well, and we’re still a long way from Spain.
“Zones one through six only,” the guard says, in a weary, patronising sing-song. This, I realise, is what being old is like: they give you free stuff, and then snatch it away so they can treat you like a moron. The guard suggests the possibility of fining us £100 each, but his heart’s not in it. He sees idiots like us all day long.
We stand to one side, purchase two tickets online and open the barriers with our phones.
“Cheer up,” my wife says.
“I’ll cheer up when we’re there,” I say.
Gatwick airport is eerily underpopulated, and we’re early. We breeze through the automated bag drop. As I reach the far end of the X-ray machines I notice a long queue of people at an information desk. Sad for them, I think. My wife’s phone pings as she takes it from the tray.
“Uh-oh,” she says.
“What?” I say.
She shows me her phone screen: an article headlined Major Disruption at Gatwick Airport.
“It’s never good,” I say, “when your chosen airport makes the news on departure day.”
“No,” she says.
I read on: a faulty plane got stuck earlier that morning, and the runway has been closed for the past hour. Flights are now resuming, but the delays are considerable.
Turning the last corner out of duty free, we are greeted by a terrible sight: an airport packed with people going nowhere. The bars are full. Every seat is taken. People are clustered round departure boards, looking anxious. I knew it was too early to cheer up.
My wife contacts the rest of our holiday party through a WhatsApp group. We find each other at a spot in front of Boots, where we play musical chairs: four seats for seven people.
“The bad news,” I say, returning from a long exploratory trip, “is that there’s no secret part of the airport that’s nicer than this part.”
Eventually someone suggests a drink, and I join two other volunteers in search of a bar with three chairs.
Ten minutes later I am seated at the far end of the airport, using an app to order a craft lager that has allegedly been brewed exclusively for Gatwick customers. The departures screen above my head updates to extend the delay of our flight from an hour and a half to an hour and 40 minutes.
“I always imagine that this is what going on a cruise must be like,” I say. “Two weeks at the airport, getting drunk.”
“But you’d have a pool,” my friend says.
“True,” I say. I think: if Gatwick had a pool, I wouldn’t swim in it.
Our beers arrive, also considerably delayed. We look around us. There are a few stag and hen parties – men dressed as vicars, women sporting drooping antennae with stars at the points – looking bored and deflated, the joke long worn thin. The refreshing departures screen catches my eye.
“Look,” I say, pointing. “Our flight just got un-delayed.”
“On time?” my friend says. “But that’s in 20 minutes.”
The WhatsApp group lights up, calling stray members of our party back from hat shops and magazine racks. We meet in front of a bank of screens, watching as the time of our departure ticks closer, still without a gate listed.
Ten minutes before our flight’s scheduled takeoff, a gate number finally appears, accompanied by the words “Gate closing”.
“Closing?” I say. “But they’ve only just …” I stop there, because the people I’m talking to have already set off. We follow signs until we join a stream of people, all sprinting, all turning to ask the strangers running alongside them the same question: are you on the Seville flight?
The departure lounge looks like the finish line of a fun run – full of people panting, hands on knees. The gate is transparently not closing, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone in charge interested in apologising for this lie.
“It’s ridiculous,” I say.
“You’re bringing me down,” my wife says.
By the time we’re on the plane we are only 20 minutes past our original departure time.
“Which, all things considered, isn’t too bad,” I say.
“Does that mean you’re going to cheer up now?” my wife says.
Looking back over the day I can see that my relentless pessimism has been no help, and I am preparing to admit as much when the pilot makes an announcement: our next available takeoff slot will be in 90 minutes.
