Santa's little bureacracy

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In order to preserve their unblemished record Virgin cancelled my flight and offered me one that left shortly after dawn or one that arrived in Sin City minutes before the plane to Singapore departs so I opted for the only sensible course and so I was up before the sparrows for the drive to town for the taxi to the airport. So far so good, through the security check, shoes set off the alarm, bags scanned for explosives, flight to Sin City and a mere seven and a half hours to kill in terminal X.

I wandered across to the Qantas terminal, through security again, shoes, beep, damn! on to the transfer lounge and was told to go out again and check my bag at gate 25. Gate 25 tell me that I can't check in until 4 hours before the flight and I should go back to the transfer lounge.
Through security in my socks, checked for explosives and off to the tranfer gate again.

First name basis now except for their rule about calling me Mister.

"Well Mister Storey we can transfer you but you'll have to wait until 1.00 to check your bag"

"That's okay" says i "I'll put my feet up in the Qantas lounge"

"Ooo 'fraid not" says she. It turns out the lounge is the other side of emmigration which they insist on calling immigration even after I am kind enough to point out the error. I cannot get past emmigration without a boarding pass which I get when I check in which I can't do until four hours before departure time. Catch 22

So I repair to the domestic lounge. "Boarding pass please" says another she as I enter, so I flash the plastic gold card and I am transformed by the power of plastic into Mr Storey once more.

I give her some chat about early mornings closed departure gates, tired, caffeine deprived etc and allow the pressure of the crowd forming behind me to propell me into the land of coffee, magazines and free internet

I'm going to start stalking Scottish muscle relaxants soon.

The person who said getting there is half the fun must have been going to some fu

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