ETA 1755

The longer I stay here, the more absurdly desi I seem to get! I leave the Hungarian behind in T5, and then curse the 12 min. wait for the Heathrow Express.... It's now been an hour since their flight landed, and my rather callous attitude towards air travel has come back to bite me in the ass.

My uncle and aunt are visiting en route to San Diego. Or is it LA? Well, the West Coast. Such epic journeys demand much grumbling about advancing years, stupid foreign countries and even stupider relatives in said countries, airline delays, packing......and Shejokaku does it full justice till Shejoma threatens to cancel the entire undertaking. They are staying with my cousin, who good Indian fashion, lives down the road from me. But since we're posh, that would be down Little Venice way and not Southall. And if I had an extra bedroom, a real shower and a wife, they could quite possibly be staying with me.

My cousin (whom I adore for reasons apart from the obvious!) offers to pick them up, and I blithely continue to wave away his offer to then accompany me. I now have 9 min. to torture myself with visions of a highly unimpressed Shejokaku & Shejoma milling about aimless in Terminal 3. But no, I had to test the rather enticing sofas at giraffe over a stale pain au chocolat and a bucket of Earl Grey (now cooling in my tense palms) getting misty eyed with the Hungarian. I call command central and they confirm that flight has indeed landed 20 mins. ahead of it's scheduled ETA. I mumble about the stupid Heathrow Express being late, and resign myself to unflattering stories about my ineptitude at family gathers for years to come.

Naturally, it is only fitting that Terminal 3 is miles away and as I hurl myself down the concourse, weaving through masses of people, balancing jhola and tea, I feel like I'm in India. It is, of course, advisable to stash mobile phone type fiddly objects in a close fitting pocket in the proximity of one's butt. Of course, the thought only occurs to me as I curse in Greek, pirouette to prevent a serious earl grey slosh and crouch to sweep up the scattered pieces of my Blackberry, all in a single flawless motion, and I'm off again.... leaping up the stairs as my phone rings. It's the cab. Fuck!! Just how late am I?? I barge through the the doors....and hello? I'm at the check-in desks! SHIT!!! All I can see is signs for departures. Wrong bloody building. Another steeple chase, this time on the outside. I heave myself through another door, trying to slurp the tea from my wrist and am assaulted by an ocean of faces, placards, luggage trolleys and wailing children. Finally!!

I desperately look around and curse my Dad's 6'3" that had made the airport pick up offer so easy. Dammit!! I've never had to pick up anyone shorter than that from Terminal 3 and at 1855, that's a needle in haystack task as my eyes scan dozens of brown, balding gentlemen with suspicion. I foray into nooks and crannies where they might have sat down to vent their disgust and fret about having missed them in the main throng as I hunt through the seating area. It has now been an hour and twenty minutes since their aircraft landed..... more confabulations with central command, and he assures me they wouldn't have gone anywhere. I take up vigil and make slurpy noises with what's left of the earl grey while my sub-conscious eavesdrops even as my conscious gapes at a tall, broad, older gentleman in a hat, shocking pink and grey striped jacket and grey shorts. Someone else is waiting for the hapless passengers of the Jet flight. The guilty panic dissipates... along with the throng. I refuse to worry about the changes in colour and ocular orientation in those now exiting.

Shejokaku's looking around expectantly. Urk! When did he get there?! I semaphore my way up to them, and my bear hug, though mostly love, is not untinged by sheer relief!! 50 minutes, stories of my nephew's latest antics, a rather heated debate over the elections and Raj Thackery, commentary on the uniform housing and lack of people, and the driver's optimism that Arsenal actually might have a hope in hell later, we're home..... and as we relax around a few bottles, I'm more jet lagged than they are....next time, I'll stay at home and cook dinner.

P.S. - What Humpty needed was a BlackBerry design team and not the King's silly horses. I can't remember the times I've retrieved the strewn bits and schleped it together, expecting it to work (I did spend a few minutes, the first time around, fabricating a plausible lie for IT to explain it's demise...). It does.