19 October 2015
I must pack for my grand trip to Washington. What to take, for four days’ worth of unpermitted meetings and conference? Eight cans of Red Bull®, 200 business cards and a posh frock for the evening do – because I am not going to make the jumper-and-boots mistake this time. Dollars, passport, travel adaptors, proper chocolate (to keep me company in my hotel room), proper gin (ditto), and something that looks a bit like an itinerary in case anybody asks where I’m going. Sadly, I have forgotten to bring the Presidential swimming gala medal home with me. This just keeps on happening. 20 October 2015, noon I am not one of those people who find foreign travel glamorous. Actually, I find it wearisome. You can do meetings anywhere, let’s face it: they are no great shakes either side of the Atlantic. I spent the first two hours of the morning convincing myself to set off at all. I was quite hard to convince. In view of my internal governance problems, it was tempting to jump ship there and then. But I figured this would leave several of my CIPA colleagues without entertainment for the trip, and that did not seem fair somehow. So I packed my case. I had already attempted the task twice the day before, but this time I managed to get it shut. Everything I had taken out of the case in order to achieve the shutting, I put into a grubby rucksack which I’m guessing puts the kybosh on my chances of an upgrade. They were never that high, it has to be said. The rucksack came with me on the Inca Trail: it is an old friend but not the type you would take to a dinner party. I drive to Bristol Parkway station. I take a train to Paddington, and another to Heathrow. So far so good. I go to check-in. At check-in I discover that things have changed since I last travelled to the US, and you now need to obtain something called an Esta before you are allowed to set off. I do not have an Esta. I have never had an Esta. Daniel at the check-in desk finds this disappointing. I have dollars, and travel adaptors, and chocolate and gin. I have something that looks a bit like an itinerary. I even have my posh frock, I say. Daniel remains unconvinced that this will be sufficient to get me into the United States of God Bless America. I look suitably pathetic and Daniel is moved to help me. He gallantly boots up his tablet, logs on to the website where you have to go to get an Esta, and allows me to apply for one there and then, using his tablet, while he waits patiently to be able to print me a boarding card. I am so going to write to BA about Daniel when my ordeal, I mean trip, is over, to nominate him for a Customer Service Award. I may even nominate him for a CIPA award. God Bless Daniel! Armed with my boarding pass and official authority to enter into the United States, if not from CIPA’s Internal Governance Committee then at least from US Customs (which is what counts right now), I begin my journey through Heathrow Airport. This involves a lot of walking, some lifts, some escalators and a shuttle train that I might find quite exciting if I were with the kids, but I am not so I don’t. It seems to me that the shuttle train is a neat way of disguising the fact that although my ticket says Heathrow I am actually flying from somewhere nowhere near Heathrow at all. Like Gatwick. At the gate, I suffer the indignity of being told to remain seated while the important people are ushered onto the plane in time to get wasted on pre-flight champagne. There is nothing like an airline boarding system to make you realise your status in the world. I am, of course, travelling Pleb Class, to avoid spending undue amounts of CIPA members’ money in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures such as those involved in travelling from deepest Zummerzet to Washington DC via Heathrow Terminal 5. My status in the world is only marginally higher than a crate full of globe-trotting guinea pigs.
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