14 January 2016, 4 pm
I am off to Geneva! Yesterday I had to explain to my teenage daughter that Geneva is a city, not a beauty salon or a restaurant: she is studying sociology not geography, dur! Geneva, I said, perhaps a tad pompously, is in Switzerland, the land of cuckoo clocks, army knives, posh watches and even posher banking, political neutrality and military abstention. And above all, CHOCOLATE!! Switzerland, I said, is part of the European continent but interestingly it is not actually a member state of the European Union. It is however a signatory to the European Free Trade Agreement and the European Patent Convention, which latter it subscribes to in association with Liechtenstein, but not part of the European Economic Area. I realised I had lost her as soon as I stopped talking about chocolate. She had already begun making a list of the airport gifts I should return with. Anyway, today I am flying to the land of cuckoo clocks and CHOCOLATE and this is quite exciting. I have finished the obligatory battle with the self-service checkout machine in WH Smith®, this battle without fail involving my boarding card which the machine has to scan so that WH Smith can avoid charging me VAT and instead charge me an Airport Sucker Levy which can be pocketed without telling the tax man. I have finished being scanned for terrorist equipment and this time avoided leaving anything vital like my passport behind with the security guards. I have finished handing over my suitcase to EasyJet® to play rugby with, and again managed to convince them that the suitcase did not contain any instruments of evil, other than some subversive documents about governance and leadership. So now I am sitting around waiting to board and be bored. I have a cheese and pickle sandwich in my bag, but I’m saving it for later. There is not much to enjoy about Bristol airport, so you have to make the good bits last.
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