Did you pack this bag yourself?

Saskia, who has not featured in this blog for a while due to the fact that she seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth, not returning calls, ignoring texts and even, when Charlie turned up on her doorstep, not answering the door even though her car was outside and Heart radio booming out of her open upstairs window, is back. With a vengeance.

We suspected a new man on the scene and one that was either so devastatingly handsome that she didn’t want to share him even with her oldest and most loyal of friends or so damn ugly that she’s been hiding away for fear of ridicule.

It turns out it was neither. Having spent the best of part of, ooh, a year, wallowing in the fact that she was no longer enjoying her job as head buyer at a well known posh store, taking ridiculous personality tests and visiting head hunters and life coaches galore she bit the bullet and applied for a job with a very well known airline and got it. As of next week she will be part of the Passenger Handling team and will get to walk round with one of those walkie-talkie things and a clipboard.

Come on, we’ve all watched at least one episode of Airline – the lives and traumas of airport staff based in Luton, Stansted and Liverpool. It’s compulsive viewing. My favourite bits usually revolve around arrogant man/whining woman who are x amount of minutes late and are unable to board their flight, who know they are x amount of minutes late and are unable to board their flight but still manage to argue, postulate, threaten and generally act up because there’s a camera crew filming their every expletive.

Now, I’m not a vindictive person (hah!) but I would LOVE to stand there and tell said arrogant man/whining woman that there is more chance of hell freezing over or of Jamie Oliver cooking and eating a turkey twizzler than there is of them getting on their flight. It must be wonderful. There was one episode where a man was late for his flight because he was holed up in the bar on his mobile phone. Numerous calls had been put out for him but the flight left without him as it couldn’t delay any longer. He strolled up to the check in desk, found it closed and bellowed like a wounded animal. It took three check in clerks and a supervisor to calm him down. His excuse? He wasn’t aware that they’d merely boom out his name, flight number and flight information on a tannoy system across the whole airport – he thought someone would come and get him.

Of course, there are some travellers that you feel sorry for. The woman, for instance, whose baby wasn’t on her passport, only her husbands – her husband was staying at home, she was flying to Geneva to show off said baby to proud first time grandparents. Or the woman who missed her flight to Barcelona and was interviewing 20-odd teachers, some of whom could only get there on that day. She squeaked and cried like a chipmunk as the valiant supervisor explained that she could be transferred onto a later flight and I sat there cringing at her voice and wondering where she got her travel bag from.

I suspect that Saskia will be very good at her new job – she certainly doesn’t suffer fools gladly (and you get quite a lot of those at airports I should imagine) and takes great delight in being in the right. I can just see her standing there with a “Check-in closed” sign just as late passengers approach the desk. I can also envisage the arguments that will undoubtedly follow.

I wonder when the television crews will be back....