As I was going through airline security at Schiphol airport, yesterday, I went through the usual steps of taking my coat off, taking my suit jacket off, taking my laptop out of my bag and placed all of these on the conveyor belt. Suddenly the Securitas man looked at me, with a wild, if not manic look in his eyes, and said softly "The end is near!".
Now - why would this have bothered me? Well - for those of you who have worked with me during the last 16 months, you will know that I have a perennial fear of flying. Every bump, every sway of the plane is met, not with the usual indifference you would expect from a frequent flyer, but a white knuckle, seat clutching fear, a fear, no doubt irrational in every sense of the world, but which serves to make my life pass in front of my eyes every single Monday morning. Those of you who travel to work in a car may think that having to brave the rush hour, pre 9am traffic, is no great start to your week - but trust me, having to accept that you are about meet your maker is really much, much worse. In fact, accepting my impending watery grave in the North Sea (unless of course, I'm flying over the Atlantic) is the only way I can cope with flying - and landing safely really comes as a surprising bonus......and that sort of thing can really put a crimp on your Monday morning.
So. you can imagine that when even calm days can induce such feelings of fear, that it was with a heavy heart I set off for the departures lounge at Schiphol on Thursday evening. Heavy storms had battered Britain all day, worse was to come, and the departures board showed "Cancelled" as a recurring status. But the Leeds Bradford flight was still flying. "You're very lucky that you are still going," said the check in girl, "it is VERY windy today". Before I could explain the irony of her comment to her, I was already making my way through through passport control. Looking through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the departures lounge, the planes were shifting slightly from side to side, ailerons were being blown to 45 degree angles to the tail fins, and the ground crews hung their heads against the fierce winds blowing across the runways. And so, with my heart pounding, I headed to Security....
"What?", I asked the Securitas man, almost in disbelief.
"Yes," he replied with a smile, "the end of the line is near. All those delays we've had due to the weather - this line for Security has been so long......."
