It started when Peter Crossley, Douglas travel agent to the gentry, handed me my tickets to Gatwick with what I can only describe as a sly smile and said: ‘I’ve arranged assistance for you when you get there.’
This related to my walking stick which has already been waved about in the Examiner as being for my good right hand and my bad right leg.
The assistance started when I boarded the Flybe flight at Ronaldsway and the stewardess told me I should wait for everybody else to get off first when we landed.
Me and my stick and my in-flight bag were then greeted by a small electric truck with driver. They trundled me through the hidden depths of the airport, saving me the walk, to where a taxi was waiting to take me on to my daughter’s home in mid-Hampshire.
I paid for the taxi. Gatwick has no responsibility for onward transmission.
(People who know the grim experience of negotiating Gatwick afoot because the place seems to cover most of the counties of Surrey and Sussex might rejoice to know that the name Gatwick derives from the Anglo Saxon for goat farm which is what used to be there in the 16th Century before somebody decided to build a shopping centre with associated air travel facilities through which people could be herded like, well, goats I suppose).
The driver of my little truck was friendly and helpful and he piloted us adroitly in and out of lifts and through tunnels without encountering any of the plodding peasantry elsewhere in the building.
When I went to Gatwick for the return flight (I paid for the taxi again) I muttered the magic word ‘assistance’ to the check-in girl, waving my stick at her in what I hope wasn’t a threatening manner.
After this I was wheel-chaired to a dedicated security check where the staff were kind and solicitous and it was much quicker, and then on to what I must describe as a holding pen for the likes of me. It was rather like a fenced-in casualty clearing station. We were given pagers to hang round our necks. When they went off it would be time for us to move on to the departure lounge in new trucks.
Mine took me to the foot of the aircraft steps and this time I was put on first and settled smugly in my seat. When the other passengers got on they looked at me with resentment.
This is really the way for travel involving airports. It occurred to me that certain persons might pretend to need a walking stick to get the treatment illicitly.
But I would deplore this. The honourable thing to do is wait for the natural onset of physical disability or, if you can’t wait, try falling down a flight of concrete steps a few times.
-------------
Two weeks ago I referred to the 1956 circus film ‘Trapeze’ in which I averred that ‘Burt Lancaster got Gina Lollobrigida in the end instead of Tony Curtis’. This brought in an e-mail from Geoffrey Clark saying: ‘I am sure he would not have been disappointed or regarded La Lollo as second best in winning her instead of winning Tony Curtis. In fact I would imagine he was much relieved that he did NOT win Tony Curtis instead.’
You have got me in one Mr Clark.
-------------
This week’s wacky website is that of Pen Island, where you can get pens: www.penisland.net.