Arrival

As I look out of my hotel room at the blue skies with the shadow of the sun beaming down with friendly warmth (in the room it is a cool 21C and outside 24C so here is my first entry from South Africa.

I suppose it is always good to start on a good note but despite all my ability to plan you just cant rely on others.

At Manchester I tried to book in with Air France who I had paid my ticket with but they had no record of me, luckily I had my reservation  no only to discover that I was not booked on AF but their budget airline. So after spending £900 for the ticket to Jnb  I now have to by my own refreshments on the leg to Paris.  Still I am on my way that is until until I reach Security who did not like the cameras and all the recharger units 8 in all – still more about this when I talk about the French Security.

The next was the flight was delaid by an hour as there was a medical emergency when it arrived so they had to wait for the paramedics to arrive and take the patient away.  Luckily my flight from Paris was not until 23.35.

I do not know what it is about the French security but the do not like me or may be it is me always getting it wrong.  Like a good boy I put lap top in the box on its own the rest of the stuff in separate trays.  They did not like my camera jacket that contained 2 bodies and 4 lenses so back it all comes and has to be up packed and sent through one at a time.  Then they did not lie the camera back pack  containing the 500mm lens and the amount of cables I was carrying

So that came back and had to all go through individually.  By this time the queue was growing and getting frustrated. Then my laptop bag (without the laptop) goes through – they did not like that and back it came when an argument started as they accused my of not declaring an iphone or ipad – now those of you that know me, know I am a trogladite and own neither.  So  show them that there was nothing in it except a cd and my medication which is backed with foil and my security purse with all the credit cards  so the data cant be screened after another attempt back it comes and they repeat  the statement. It is a pity that they see my tablets as threatening so they now give in.  At last all my items have gone into 10 trays and is sitting at the other side of the x-ray machine.  Now it was my turn I take of my belt and boots a nd walk through the personal x-ray machine which goes green  May luck is on my side but then this security person comes up and wants to frisk me  well he’s French may be I Am different I would have preferred the lady but he insisted.  No as the flight is 11 hours long and I am on a window seat, and again those that know me my diabetes causes me to go to the  toilet between every 30 min and 2 hours so taking pity on my fellow passengers I was fitted with a condom urine leg bag – I wont go into the graphic details of how it was fitted suffice it to say there was a tube running down the inside of my leg.  Well this caused the guy to go into overdrive  I don’t understand French and I thought the quickest way to show him that I was not the devil incarnate so I dropped my pants for all to see.  Well the reaction was atomic, Englishman in security having already taken up 40 minutes is no standing with his pants round his ankles. I then gathered by the very red faced guard that he wanted me to  pull my pants up and indicated for me top stay where I was.  He then disappeard and returned with 3 guards of which one of them had a prodding device with  material on the end. I tried to explain what it was and was getting nowhere so I started to drop my pants again,  There are never any pretty girls around to impress when you need them.  I gathered all he wanted to do was to shove this probe up my trouser leg.

At last I was given the all clear after 50 minutes to now go and claim my belongings.  As they had been so difficult I held up the line whilst I casually repacked everything methodically taking a further 10 minutes so now I had held this machine up for 70 minutes so all the other passengers all had to go through the other machine.  Well I had 3 hours to kill now it was only 2.  As I walked away a supervisor came out of the office and demanded to see my boarding pass and passport and took both of them away to return very promptly to wish me Bon Voyage.

2 years ago they did not like me either so now I am well and truly a marked man at Paris CDG airport.  Thank goodness I am coming back with KLM

The flight was uneventful except the landing which was with a cross wind so as the touched down he had to correct the drift to taxi down the main runway.

The car hire was great and planning meant I arrived at the hotel by about 11:30 with out getting lost.  I know I was a bit early and was met by the owner who said he knew nothing about the booking and as My brother had paid a cash deposit in  January I showed him the receipt and confirmation emails.  It transpired that his computer had crashed in March and he had lost all the Date including the back up.

Well that was soon sorted – what’s the rest of the holiday going to be like.