Tuesday 28 August 2012

Postcards from Tenerife - Easyjet and the Twinnies


Dear Reader,

I find myself travelling again. Regrettably, I find myself once again on my least favourite orange coloured airline. I have spoken about these chaps before here, today they have some new surprises for me.
Today we have a new part to play, yay!
First we have to get to the airport. It is an early flight, the thought of which makes me shudder. The blow has been softened a little by spending the previous night in a hotel approximately four centimetres from the check-in desk. This does not prevent us having to get up three hours before we went to sleep so we are in time for our flight.
Having awoken, early and angry, we arrive at check-in to find our dear orange friends have requisitioned an entire hall of check-in desks for us to queue in, how thoughtful. What a shame they hadn't manned any of them. Given we were queueing within fifteen minutes of check-in opening I was somewhat disappointed to be dragged out of line when it became clear we would miss our flight if we stayed in the queue.

Dragged out and checked-in, we advance through security at high-speed. At this point we are united as a group, my good self, the Dear Lady Wife and her Twinny. 

I should break at this point and explain the Twinny. Twinny is a female colleague of the Dear Lady Wife and they share enough attributes to make the word Twinny seem appropriate. A  list of shared attributes follows:
  • Shopping - preferably by mail order
  • Lack of organisation
  • Love of wine
  • Love of animals (every single one, but especially cats and donkeys)
  • Ability to wail at the slightest inconvenience
  • Ability to meltdown at a slightly larger inconvenience
  • Inability to make decisions.
I share most of these attributes so we get on well. For the journey we require magazines, speakers and something from the chemist. I do the speakers, DLW does the magazines and the Twinny does the chemist. We vow to meet somewhere. This doesn't happen. Last call for the flight is announced. I rendezvous with DLW, but no sign of the Twinny.

We run for the gate, making it with approximately three minutes to spare. Twinny, however has not arrived. We phone, she is still in the chemist haggling over the price of some unguent. Then her name comes over the tannoy... "RUN" we say. Having finalised her transaction, along with three or four others, she deigns to run. Having stood on the transfer bus for ten minutes, we see her appear at check-in. Astonishingly, she is only second to last. United again, we advance to the plane.

There were two special moments on the plane; for once I don`t just mean take off and landing. Our orange friends had gone above and beyond the call of duty. First, we ordered food, which in itself was not special. What was special was one of the food items. It was so special I had to capture a shot of the packaging.

WTF is this?
I have never heard the words meat, festival, arctic, bread and wedge used in the same sentence before, but there they were. I attempted to imagine what combination of ingredients could encompass such a grand and wordy title, I came up short. How many ingredients are required for a meat festival? Two of them, apparently. 

This astonishing artefact was in fact a lifeless chicken, ham and cheese sandwich in pitta bread with some leaves. Hardy a festival, but definitely a wedge. Below is the item in all it's glory. You will note a bite has been taken out of it. There were no more bites to follow.

Come to the Meat Festival...
Our second special moment came when the orange flight attendant attempted to sell some of their on-board wares. During his little speech he referred to page 494 of his brochure and announced the following... "We have a number of Loreal products at excellent duty free prices, and I know we have some Loreal fans on the plane today...". "HOW?" I couldn`t stop myself from asking out loud. Do you stop them in the check-in area, on the way to the flight? Do you suck out their minds when they check-in on-line in an attempt to get their buying preferences? I didn't get a suitable answer.

Eventually, we land and collect our belongings with surprisingly little hassle. I have a piece of paper which is our hire car voucher. It says that we should pick up our car from the Orinoco desk or something similar. The desk in question does not exist. After much wandering up and down the terminal looking lost, we locate someone who explains that Orinoco have a person who occasionally appears in the airport, waving a board. The Twinnies look less than impressed. As promised, the person eventually arrives. At this point, we are escorted to a mini-van, which may, or may not, take us to the fabled hire desk. We may be kidnapped; if only I was friends with Liam Neeson.

We arrive at what can only be described as an underground garage, located some distance from the airport. The possibility of kidnap looms larger. There is a desk, of sorts. Driving licenses are perused, papers signed and we are away in a car, on the wrong side of the road with no clue as to where we are going. Sat-Nav is neither an option on the car or as a stand-alone add-on. We are given a mysterious piece of paper with lines and pictures on it and ushered on our way. Apparently this is a map, I have heard of these but didn't think people still used them.

Thus ends the first part of our little adventure.

More soon Dear Reader.

xxx

5 comments:

  1. Sounds like a movie! I love your witty style of writing, looking forward to the second part.

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  2. My life is a movie, a very tedious one :(

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  3. Wooooow . .. You ve good stuffs here!!!!


    http://nuurwahidanshary.blogspot.com

    http://mr-obu.blogspot.com

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  4. i am following you on Google Friend Connect.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And I am following you back. Thanks for visiting.

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