The perils and panic of travel writing by Will Nett
No more close shaves. This is the new 2025 travel me; organised and relaxed...
The bus is on time, leaving Leeds for Huddersfield, en route to Manchester Airport, at 1.40pm. I’m on it. No more close shaves. No more down-to-the-wire making my connection at the last second travel dramas. This is the new 2025 travel me; organised and relaxed.
My plane for Tirana leaves at 4.45pm. I’m scheduled to arrive at the airport at 3.15pm, a full ninety minutes before wheels-up. I’ll take a leisurely stroll through the terminal, maybe indulge in an overpriced pastry on the way… we seem to be taking something of a scenic route as the driver’s microphone crackles into life. Oh, what’s this; a delay?
Driver: “Due to work being carried out on the M62, we’ll be making a detour, which will add around twenty-five minutes on the journey.”
Okay… so we’ll get there at 3.45pm. No need to panic.
We limp along like a battle-bombed Russian army convoy as my trip slips further and further out of reach. My breathing grows shallower and shallower with every creeping inch moved through Middleton, Harpurhey and Wythenshaw. By the time we pass the petrified remains of Bernard Manning’s Embassy Club, I’m engulfed in a weapons-grade panic attack. And there’s still the penultimate stop at Shudehill Interchange in Manchester city centre ahead. I glance at my Casio; it is wreathed in an anxious sweat but the time blinks out in vivid black numerals: 3.27pm.
The driver assures us that we’ll be at the airport in ‘twenty five minutes’ but doesn’t factor in driving out of Shudehill Interchange and leaving three passengers behind. He rushes back to retrieve them and my anxiety turns to oppressed rage. None are in quite as much of a hurry as I am, it seems. One other passenger is; an Albanian woman, Shpresa, also on my flight. She looks to me for assurance but in my head, I’m already calculating the bus and train timetables that will return me to Middlesbrough.
We reach the airport at 3.57pm. Terminal 3 is of course furthest from the bus stand. I’m the de facto leader of the expedition, now; it’s somehow my responsibility to get the Albanian woman on the plane as well, like some hard-boiled bounty hunter on a deadline to meet the bondsman.
We explode into the terminal and head upstairs to the skylink. I’m hoisting her case by the handle and lugging my own 10kg backpack to boot. My mouth is so dry that I can hardly muster up the cough that I’ve developed in the last few seconds. I race ahead of Shpresa on the skylink, pushing the case out ahead of me and chasing after it. Shpresa means ‘hope’ in Albanian, but it, and her, are fading fast.
...it’s somehow my responsibility to get the Albanian woman on the plane as well, like some hard-boiled bounty hunter on a deadline to meet the bondsman.
It’s turning into my third near-death experience – land, sea and now air(port) will complete the triumvirate. I want to die. My chest is bursting as we break every rule on the airport security ‘Don’t’ list: running… handling other peoples’ luggage… dropping stuff… shouting… bowling people aside. She’s ready to keel over, which will leave me with her luggage. What if I’ve killed her? I imagine myself reading a eulogy at her funeral, standing at the grave in the remote Albanian countryside amongst weeping bukuroshet: ‘She was a good woman, but couldn’t make the step up to middle-distance.’
I boom out of the skylink like cannon fire but have the good sense to leave Shpresa’s case behind. I can’t tackle the brief uphill incline to Terminal 3 with it in tow and there’s nothing quite like discarding a case in the entrance way of an airport terminal and sprinting away from the scene as a way of rousing security. Ju lutem.
In my panicked arrival at the terminal, I attempt to check in, even though I’ve already done it online, spilling another five minutes-worth of sand from the fast-emptying egg timer of the trip. I shunt my way through to the security check area where my bag is swabbed…TWICE...! which at least gives my lungs some much needed respite, before embarking on the last leg, tying up baggage straps, belts and laces like some fleeing BDSM lothario escaping through a bedroom window. I clatter through row after row of fast-food outlets, gift shops and craft ale bars, looking up briefly to see the throbbing red neon glow of ‘Last Call’ for my flight on one of the display screens. It’s 4.19pm and I still haven’t boarded. I’m not sure that I want to.
There’s nothing quite like discarding a case in the entrance way of an airport terminal and sprinting away from the scene as a way of rousing security...
I missed a flight, once, after casually strolling through Las Vegas airport oblivious to the fact that it was Thanksgiving Weekend. I calmly accepted that I had arrived one minute late – at 4.16pm – arranged to take the next one, then attached myself to a fruit machine for a very therapeutic six hours. The almost twenty years in between that day and this have changed my perception of air travel, timekeeping, and travel in general to an extent that I hadn’t really noticed until this latest near miss.
“It’s because you’re externally referenced; the panic attack,” a therapist told me soon after. She’s right. I’d be embarrassed – as an alleged travel writer – to have missed a flight, hence my body’s reaction: a near-shutdown.
I’m ushered out onto the runway apron at 4.22pm. I melt into my seat at 4.24pm, like a turd sliding down the back of a toilet pan.
The flight departs six minutes early.
Shpresa’s sitting right behind me as cool as a kastravec.
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