1st: Rail-replacement bus service?

Roll on another year and here we get going on annual examining trip number seven. It doesn’t seem too long ago since my first trip and I was noted for my youth at every centre I went to. “The person we had last year was so much older!” they used to exclaim, along with, “being so young, the students will find it so much easier to talk to you”, although paraphrasing a bit as I’m thinking they probably wouldn’t have started the sentence with a gerund. But you never know.

To keep this belief of juvenility fresh, this year, in my first centre, one of the teachers did note my youth; although you never can really tell whether or not it’s just a good ploy to butter up the examiner. To add the amount of scepticism that already existed, any feeling that I’d been drinking from the cup of the goddess Hebe was washed well away when, upon checking colours and possessive adjectives, one ten-year-old candidate said my hair was brown and white. Well, she was limited to nothing higher than a ‘Pass C’ from the moment she said that. I can only think it must’ve been the curious lighting in the room...

Anyway, here we are again and back in Caserta, the town I was billeted at just two years ago - pictures and details can be found on the 2008 blog. Unusual to come back to the same place so soon, but at least it’s a good place, with the added bonus of a change of hotel. More on the hotel in a future blog. It deserves a short blog all for itself.

My trip, albeit a short one from Shepherd’s Bush to Caserta, was sadly, not uneventful. With a flight at 10:55 from Gatwick, I knew that I had to check in 45 minutes before departure (knowing this from my missed BA flight last year when a seriously delayed train of two hours delivered me to the airport 15 minutes after check in closed but 30 minutes’ before departure, only to find I couldn’t board). Not thinking it necessary to check in online because of the time I’d left myself to get to Gatwick (leaving a full 45 extra minutes in case of travel delay), I set off after a light breakfast of peanut butter on toast – I didn’t leave enough time for the planned mackerel. The first problem came at the tube to Hammersmith. Having just missed one, there wasn’t another for 10 minutes: your Sunday service for you. Getting to Hammersmith to change onto the District, I found myself waiting for another 15 minutes, while overweight tube drivers strolled up and down the platform without any obvious sense of purpose.

No problem, as I was still well within my time of getting to the check in for 10:10. Board the Gatwick Express – no Southern Rail service for me, because as the Gatwick Express claims in its advertising, ‘any other choice is a risk’© - I settle in for a speedy 30-minute journey to Gatwick, giving me now 30 minutes before check in closed. All good. Only, the Gatwick smegging Express did turn out to be risk this time, being over taken by the slower Southern Rail train to the airport. So, it takes fifteen minutes’ longer to get to the airport. I felt cheated, even though he fare was on the exam board.

Still no problem, because Mr Ben had his clever hat on and left plenty of time and still had 15 minutes to check in. Easy. Only I’m flying BA and they go from the North terminal, and not the one the train gets into. OK, take the driver-less shuttle train between terminal and be there in 5 minutes, still leaving a full ten to get to a check in machine. Still good.

But oh my, what’s this? The shuttle isn’t operating and it’s a rail-replacement bus service which is a considerable walk away from the terminal and oh, I’ve just missed one. Still, there are dozens of busses stacked up and they’re bound to leave in pretty quick succession. You’d have thought. Ten minutes to go before check in closes and finally (an eternity it seems), the bus pulls away, jam-packed with passengers. Being first on, I’m counting the minutes squeezed up in between the fat of Surrey and Essex and their not inconsiderable amount of luggage, being buffeted about between sets of matching pink and gold-coloured suitcases on their way to the Canaries. While the driver-less shuttle is no more than a 200-metre journey between terminals, the replacement bus goes onto the motorway (!) to get to the other terminal. Time ticks on while my pulse quickens considerably. I’m starting to rue the fact that I even had the peanut butter on toast as that made me miss the train and then you’ve got a whole list of past perfect sentences. It’s like ‘John’s Bad Day’ from Implementing the Lexical Approach, only it’s peanut butter on toast that’ll end up costing me about £200 for a new flight rather than a forgotten umbrella costing me my job (one for the language teachers).

We get to the terminal; the fat person in front of me is struggling to get their suitcase from a rack that could easily transport a small elephant between circus towns and then... And then, I’m out the bus. 10:07 and three minutes remaining. I can still do it – I’m hopeful. The bus journey was fairly fast, despite the seeming detour via Dorking. Because of the concrete barriers to guide passengers safely past the non-existent refurbishment works, I struggle to get past the Essex family with hair done specially for the occasion of the flight and crossing a county boundary. I’m running now and praise the fact that I travel light and never pack anything I can’t move quickly with. BA’s check in dead ahead. Just got to get to a counter. But the queues. But no, forget the queues, there aren’t even any check ins, just bag drops. No check ins. I curse. Why are there no check ins. Surely some people don’t have a computer. Panic starts to spread. Can I be so near and yet so far. Think footballing clichés: “Got to dig deep”, “The boy will do good”. Damned lack of appropriate adverbs. Mustn’t think prescriptive grammar. ‘Concentrate’, a part of my mind tells another. I ask a sleepy lady at a desk who lets me know it’s all by machine these days and then onto bag drop. How things change.

Fine. Safe, no queues at the machines. Must be under two minutes left. I can do it, I know I can. I can check in with credit card (I didn’t book it, so no), reference number (my itinerary didn’t get mailed to me so I don’t have a copy of it, so no) or passport. Yes, passport I do have. Insert and go. But no, still no. The machine needs more information – the flight number. The flight number? Race back across the ten yards to the sleepy lady who doesn’t know the flight number. She shouts across to her counterpart who is actually called, ‘ ‘Chelle’.

By the time she shouts back the number, I’m back at the screen, ready to input the number just as the protagonist might in a James Bond / science fiction cliff hanger where there a bomb’s about to go off unless the correct code’s inputted in time. The red lights are flashing and the klaxon’s wailing with a clock, counting down on a huge screen, signalling the end of the world. A sizable crowd of people of all nations is united and hushed, standing round me, some saying their last prayers and others not daring to hope they might yet live.

But the universe hasn’t had all its fun yet. I’m back to input the flight number ‘Chelle has just called out and the smegging machine times out. This has only taken about twenty seconds – I bleet like NZ a lamb that’s just realised where all its play friends have gone. Faced with a screen full of buttons of options, there’s a green one, which I press without really reading it. Not even having time to begin to wonder if it was the right one, I’m back on the input screen. In it goes: BA 2610, enter. And yes, the confirmation screen – I’ve done it. I can eat peanut butter on toast again. I turn around expecting to see a crowd cheering, Sigourney Weaver fighting her way through the commotion with Jones the cat, ready to take me away to a place of celebration with bands starting up and large gins on the house. But of course, this is Gatwick at 10:10 in the morning. There are no crowds except for the ones still struggling with their luggage and the bag drops. Time to go to the bag drop myself, where, after queuing next to a German who’s upset she can’t put four bags in the hold at no extra cost, the bag drop lady reprimands me for being late. “A minute later and you’d have missed it, you know” she says in an offhand, school mistress-type of voice. I refrain from punching her.

And then to the flight (the the beautiful Gatwick in the picture). A ham sandwich, gin and then a nap. I’m exhausted. I almost begin to chat to the very attractive lady next to me but small talk’s beyond me. Sleep it is. Naples was a breeze in comparison. Crazy driving, lots of beeping of horns and then people vomiting on the train to Caserta (think the sick guy coughing into the food in the ‘Casandra Crossing’).Time to sit down and relax. Beer, crisps (I’m starving but it’s five o’clock and there’s no real food to be had for at least another two hours when restaurants begin to open) and a book. Back on tour, eh?