For anyone living on the correct side of the river, here in the leafy, lovely, little-bit-smug but ever-so-pleasant Norf, Gatwick Airport is where Bealzibub hangs out. It is a curse on modern transportation. Inaccessible, far distant, only approachable on roads you NEVER want to use or by trains which they don’t run at Christmas time. Perfect, let’s fly from there!! Not out of choice, obviously, but it was a charter and Gatwick was part of the deal. Noooooooooo…

I hate driving there but was prepared to. Except: to park is so stupidly expensive that it was cheaper to get a taxi. Which was itself, having unilaterally decided to include our departure date of Christmas Eve as part of the ‘holiday pricing’, also ridiculously expensive. But the trains were striking and the parking not happening so I said to the guy from the mini cab firm we always use; I said: “look Mo, that’s not very Christian of you, is it?”, but no, its holiday, 20 quid extra.

Today we returned. And walked 2 minutes from arrivals to the train station. Where the Gatwick express was ‘un-running due to (pick an excuse and write it here)’. But we didn’t want that anyway. We wanted the Thameslink. Train leaving in 6 minutes, going to West Hampstead. ‘The Dream’. Went to the ticket machine and, due to something like ‘old age’, but for much younger people like me and Mel, the tickets cost £11.90 for both of us. I thought that was a bit steep really, at my age, but let it pass. Arriving in West Hampstead 50 minutes later. The taxi would have taken twice that.

The moral being: there is now hope when forced to go to Gatwick.

As opposed to Spurs for which it is appearing that there is simply no hope whatsoever. I know, we’re 5th in the league but yesterday almost ruined my entire holiday as we reached a low point, even when the bar has been quite low for some time now.

I wonder if Gatwick have a football team…

Happy 2023

A xxxx