This is the way it began.  We were about to get to sleep around 9:30 figuring that if we are getting special treatment with Fatal services so we could get up at 4 and leave at 4:30 to get in time to be 2 hours early for the flight at 7.  But suddenly Ezi got a message from Fatal that they can’t handle our special treatment.  That meant that we would have to be at the airport at 3:30 and should leave by 3.  That meant that there would be no sleep for us because we had to spend an hour vainly pleading with Fatal and the other places they referred us to that we were relying on help and therefore didn’t ask for a wheelchair.  Nope. 

So with no sleep we caught the flight to Boston with a stopover at Heathrow where we had decided to forego  our visit with dear cousins who live nearby and play it safe.  Well, it soon became apparent that we were wise to forego the visit because Heathrow is a combination of Louis Carroll and Kafka.   And it took us almost 2 hours to get through customs and to the waiting room.  One feature: the incredibly long queue waiting for security check.  How long?  So long that we got stopped at various stages of our journey because there was no room to progress.  And when we finally arrived at the queue, having followed all the directions for putting every possible liquid in a regulation transparent bag, and removed our watches, revealed our devices, etc., travellers became so nervous that they began asking questions of the guard.  This reminded the guard to forbid another item and everyone bent over to search through their trolleys for the newly listed item. Stick deodorant?  Toothpaste given on the previous flight?  Handcream presented on the previous flight?    So the exercise was take 10 steps, stop, bend over trolley, open, search, remove, rearrange, stand up, repeat.    

And now we’re almost on our way back to the gate, and after we all vow never to go through heathrow again, we’ll take off for a 7 hour flight.

why oh why do some many relatives live so far away?