Well here I am travelling again.
Only a fortnight after coming back from Thailand I am off to Abu Dhabi via Dubai.
Gatwick is awkward to get to. At least from Deal it is. Its either a car ride up to the M25 and around or a train. If you take the car then it has to be parked and paid for. Not only that, but the neighbours can’t break into your house, steal the key and drive it around France if it’s parked in the long stay at Gatwick.
I decided to take the train.
It was completely and unremarkably uneventful.
So there. Bugger all to report.South Eastern was on time, Perfectly so. As I arrived at Tonbridge, the first change, my next train was waiting just yards away. Similarly at Redhill, the final train to Gatwick was waiting – although I had to cross the bridge to the next platform which I considered a bit of a chore ! So, nothing happened, no disasters, no altercations, at least not on the trains,no problems at all. Nothing to report except I arrived exactly on time at Gatwck as promised by SouthEastern Trains. Brownie points for them I guess.
Ahhh, breakfast at Weatherspoons in Gatwick. Luxury. Bloody luxury.
Well alright, its not fine dining at the best of times but it was not half bad at all. And the tea was fine. I even had another cup.!
Well something has gotta go wrong.
But it didn’t. Well, I had already had a slight argument with some dickhead foreigner who, ‘cos he spoke good English thought he would try it out on me. Well, perhaps he wasn’t a foreigner. Perhaps he was a home grown Brit . who knows….who cares! He was wheeling two suitcases behind him. A handle in each hand trailing them behind.You know, the small carry on type cases with wheels.Not that difficult to do, pull two cases along but I suppose he thought this a feat of some kind. I wouldn’t put it past seeing him on Britains Got Talent someday.
As I rounded a corner he was coming towards me some ten or fifteen yards away. There was a desk jutting out and I had to walk around the corner of it but he expected me to stop so he could walk past, with a whole concourse he expected me to stop and let him pass presumably to satisfy some macho ego trip by forcing me to stop.
Wrong. I just carried on. He was forced to take, well, only minor evasive action, but enough for him to throw back over his shoulder about being impatient etc, etc, crap, crap. Boy did he pick the wrong man on the wrong day. I’ve been in a mood for a couple of days. A bad mood. And he got it.
All of it. In your face all of it.
I stopped on hearing his voice. turned, walked back the four or five yards I gone past and he knew, I could see it in his face. He knew.
“Listen dickhead. You saw me coming from ten yards away. You have a concourse half a f****** football field wide with nobody on it! and I can only either stop or walk into a desk. As you can see I didn’t walk into the desk and I didn’t f****** stop. You steer those things away to give people room, not force them to wait on you. We are not all here to get out of your way . Prat”
He turned and walked away.
I was so disappointed.
I wanted the full half hour argument.
But I felt so much better as I sat down to brekky ten minutes later.